As part of the Live & Learn Project, Citizens Advice delivered an accredited Level 2 OCN course - “Consumer Rights and Managing Finances” to Beacon members across all the Niamh Beacon day support schemes during the summer of 2011.
This five year, Big Lottery funded, project started in September 2009 and since then the partnership has offered training from Citizens Advice to Niamh staff, volunteers and members and for Citizens Advice Bureaux advisers from Niamh staff.
CAB is delighted that 120 Beacon Centre members, who experience enduring mental health issues, successfully completed this course and over eighty graduates attended the ceremony, held in the Canada Room at Queens University on Friday 2nd December 2011, to receive their certificates and celebrate their fantastic achievements.
(Liam Quigley, Niamh Beacon, Alayne Kinver, Citizens Advice, Peter McBride, Niamh Beacon, Billy Murphy, Niamh Beacon, Louisa McKee, Citizens Advice, Joanne Luca, South West Regional College, Sean MacCormack, OCN NI)
Alayne Kinver, Director of Development with Citizens Advice, thanked the Beacon members for their enthusiasm and commitment , the tutors from CAB, Money Active volunteers, Beacon Centre staff, Niamh staff and Citizens Advice Training Unit for coordinating and making it possible.
The MoneyActive project, which has been developed by Citizens Advice and funded by Nationwide Building Society trains and supports volunteers to carry out pro active financial education work in their local community. This project aims to reach diverse groups and equip these individuals to budget, borrow and save with confidence and to seek support and early referral to emergency debt crisis services where needed. Nichola MacDougall Moneyactive Project Coordinator said "I am delighted that the volunteers were involved in the delivery of financial capability sessions to Beacon members throughout Northern Ireland."
Peter McBride, Group Chief Executive of Niamh, emphasised the importance of partnership working in these financially constrained times and the need to work together to do all we can to protect the most vulnerable and to lobby for their needs.
(Alayne Kinver, Citizens Advice, Sharon Dillon, Manager of Dungannon and Cookstown CAB, Louisa McKee, Citizens Advice, Paul O'Neill, MoneyActive Volunteer, Sean MacCormack OCN NI)