Celebrating Achievement

Friday 25 March 2011

Over 160 people with disabilities were honoured by The Cedar Foundation at a special Celebration of Achievement event held in The Stormont Hotel, Belfast on Friday 25th March.  The event acknowledged and applauded the achievements of those involved in training and employment programmes in the Foundation's Training and Brain Injury Services operating in the Belfast and South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust areas.

Cedar’s services aim to address the barriers which exist for disabled people in achieving their personal goals of education, training and employment.  The services are funded under the Northern Ireland ESF Programme and the Belfast and South Eastern Health and Social Care Trusts. 

Certificates were presented to the Trainees by Mr Pat McCartan, Chairperson, Belfast HSCT.  Awards for Exceptional Achievement were presented by Mr Colm McKenna, Chairperson, South Eastern HSCT and the winners were; Connor Brannigan and Nigel Montgomery (Employment Award), Angela Cummings and Michael O’Neill (Community Award), John Davis and Heather Lyons (Challenge Award) and, Michael Maginnis and Paul Caughey  (Commitment Award).

Stephen Mathews, Chief Executive of The Cedar Foundation said, “Today we are celebrating the achievements of over 160 people with disabilities who have been supported by Cedar over the past few years to obtain education and training, voluntary work and employment.   I would like to thank Mr McCartan and Mr McKenna for presenting these awards on our behalf and for the long and successful partnerships Cedar has with both Trusts.”

Mr Mathews also presented a summary of an evaluation of Cedar’s ESF Services by Deloitte MCS Ltd which quoted some of Cedar’s stakeholder feedback as follows, “The Cedar Foundation is one of the most successful voluntary sector providers in terms of being tuned into what we want.”