News

Making a Positive Difference with The Cedar Foundation

Date Posted: Monday 20 September 2004

The Cedar Foundation?s User Forum re-launched itself at its annual conference held in the Glenavna Hotel, Newtownabbey; last week. Attendees heard about the many changes and improvements that have taken place over the last 12 months that have made the new User Forum bigger and better than beforel

But what exactly is The Cedar Foundation User Forum. It's a dynamic group of people who have physical disabilities and/or brain injury who use the services of The Cedar Foundation, an organisation that works in partnership with people with physical disability in Northern Ireland. After last year?s conference at the Glenavna Hotel new enthusiasm was breathed into The Forum, with new committee members signing up and new ideas being introduced. The User Forum adopted the very appropriate slogan "Making a Positive Difference" and that's exactly what they have been doing over the last year.

Niall Irwin, Chair of The User Forum explains more: "As a group we want to help and guide people with physical disability and their families who ask for advice and offer somewhere for people to turn too to help them answer their questions. Our vision is to be a User Forum that is realistic and focussed about how we can make a positive difference to The Cedar Foundation, its Users and Members and that's exactly what we have been achieving and will be continuing to achieve".

Anne Ashe, Secretary of The User Forum, went on to highlight the achievements of The User Forum in just the last 6 months: "We finished training in March and since then we have accomplished a lot, completely down to teamwork. We have our own newsletter 'Inform', promotional literature and business cards. We are on the web, in the generic Cedar Foundation leaflet and have even been in the Belfast Telegraph. We have helped out at the Independent Living Exhibition at The Odyssey, manning the stand, and we have collected on recent Flag Days. A series of information sessions for Cedar Foundation staff on what The User Forum is have been held and we are enjoying social events such as the Charity BBQ in June".

If you would like to find out more details about the work of The Cedar Foundation User Forum contact m.ennis@cedar-foundation.org or tel: 028 9066 6188. If you would like to find out more about the general work of The Foundation please contact www.cedar-foundation.org e.mail: info@cedar-foundation.org or telephone 028 9066 6188.

Please click here to download Inform, the User Forum Newsletter

Please click here for more information on The User Forum

Click [here] to download assigned publication

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