TWO West Belfast groups have received a share of £4.6 million from the National Lottery Community Fund.
Ardmonagh Family and Community Centre's Good Morning West Belfast Project have received £9,000 to improve wellbeing by reducing isolation and loneliness in older people following the pandemic.
Speaking after the announcement, Fionnuala Lavery, Care and Elderly Services Manager at Ardmonagh, said that the money is already making a difference to their service users.
"Good Morning West Belfast is our telephone befriending service for adults over the age of 60 in West Belfast," she said.
"One of our big aims is to break down isolation and loneliness in older people. We have run a number of events since receiving the funding from the National Lottery and it has really helped improve people's mental health since the impact of Covid.
"Through the funding we have been able to run art workshops and introduce dementia therapy at the centre who have completed two reminiscence sessions with our older people.
"It is very important for us to allow our service users to talk about their life experiences in a holistic way and they find it very therapeutic."
In addition to this, the funding has allowed the centre to launch a winter lunch programme which allows them to offer 25 meals a day to their service users during November, December and January in the centre.
"We also have a Christmas dinner organised in one of the local clubs on 7 December and we hope to have around 100 service users at that. We are a registered charity and we are trying to stretch the money as far as we can as we are heavily reliant on funding."
Meanwhile, Hannahstown GAA club Lámh Dhearg have received £9,900 to make their Highway to Health more accessible.
