Northamptonshire Community Foundation Step in To Save Our Holiday Club
Staff and Parents were delighted to hear the Centre has received additional money from NCF to help save this Summer’s Holiday Club. Head of Children’s Services, Marta Jankowska, was over to moon when she heard the Centre had been awarded essential funds to make the Holiday Club happen after COVID 19 Social distances restrictions looked like making this vital service untenable.
“We were determined to get the Holiday Club going, its been such a difficult time for parents and Children and to know that we could offer this service was very delightful for us, especially when we found out we were the only Holiday Club operating in the town. The grant has been a life saver for many parents and children”.
As we near the end of the 4 week Holiday Club Children have been able to enjoy lots of great activities and really enjoy playing and learning together, trying out new things and sometimes just getting a bit ‘messy’ in a safe environment.
“We have lots of lovely activities planned for the rest of the week and are planning to finish off with a lovely party”.
Thank you once again to the Community Foundation for making this possible….
Heartfelt Thanks to the Heritage Lottery From All at the Victoria Centre
Colleagues and friends from the Victoria Centre have gathered together (in a socially distant way) to thank and praise the Heritage Lottery for their support in helping us begin to create a comprehensive archive of the Centre’s history, as part of a project to celebrate 40 years of the Centre’s operation.
Victoria Centre members, friends and staff have been helping out in the Wellingborough Community since 1979, forging links and understanding across the many diverse people that call this community home.
A grant of just over £9,000 pounds helped Centre staff and volunteers do research on the Centre’s history, find missing or mislaid records and begin to protect crucial historical materials, such as original video footage from Princess Diana’s visit in November 1984.
Funds also helped the Centre create a film showing how the centre is now as well as cataloguing some of the big events in our history.
Vice President Cynthia Bailey said, she wanted to “send her heartfelt thanks to the Heritage Lottery for providing the funds to make this possible as well as to all the volunteers and staff that helped make it happen”.
“Its been such an important project and its wonderful to begin to bring all these important articles and stories together for the posterity of the Centre and the local community”. She went on to add, “many of our records show the ‘great and the good’ of our town as well as significant characters from our own history and our Community, and this is just the beginning, we know there are so many other stories out there that we would love to capture and share”.
Centre Manager, Marion Turner-Hawes, said, we have been delighted with the information we have managed to find and being able to store it all in the right way for safe keeping is vital.
“We don’t want it all hidden away in dusty cupboards though, we have so many more artefacts and records to check through, this has got us all really excited. Its not only inspiring us to see or remember the many great achievements of the Centre its also providing lots of new materials for the Town’s social history, and this is just the tip of the iceberg we know there is so much more out there”.
One part of the project that hasn’t happened was the big 40th Birthday Party we had planned. This was set for Saturday 6th June 2020, and lots of friends across the Community and time were set to return, but alas, with the COVID 19 crisis this had to be postponed, but the team are already planning to have another go next year.
Thank you again to our friends at Heritage Lottery and we look forward to continuing to share the Victoria Centre story and legacy.
Wednesday 22nd July 2020