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Project Name: |
St Simons |
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Zone: |
Belfast South |
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Category: |
Capital |
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Social Investment Fund Outcome: |
Increasing Community Services |
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Status: |
Operational – Construction Complete |
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Funding awarded: |
£592,852 |
About the Project
The St Simon’s project consisted of the purchase and refurbishment of St Simon's Church Hall a two storey building in the Greater Village Area of South Belfast, to provide a community hub for South City Resource and Development Centre (SCRDC) with the scope to increase their capacity to enhance their existing provisions and deliver a suite of increased community services. These services include an older people’s programme, a capacity building programme, a drop-in centre, computer classes, advice units and numerous youth provisions.
The complete overhaul of the building was necessary to bring the building up to a modern fit for purpose standard that complied with health and safety requirements. Disabled access was provided throughout along with toilet facilities that are suitable for disabled people and young children.
Progress to date
The project has completed construction and is operational. The modern, refurbished, hall has been brought back into community use promoting investment in the physical regeneration in an area of deprivation in the Greater Village area and wider SIF South Belfast Zone. The project has allowed SCRDC to improve and extend their portfolio of community services to meet the demands of the local community. These include provision of employment, training and education opportunities enhancing people’s skills and employability and valuable childcare services and enhancing community capacity and partnership working to end deprivation.
Impacts
Monitoring and evaluation of all Social Investment Fund projects is carried out using “Outcomes Based Accountability” (OBA). Where SIF has funded capital works, the project provides quarterly “post-capital” data for a period of 3 years which details the positive impacts enabled by the capital works undertaken. The final capital infographic below highlights some of the key impacts of the project to date. The St Simons project is in the early stages of post capital OBA returns and OBA data collection is ongoing for the final post capital infographic.
