A CROSS-COMMUNITY organisation on the Springfield Road are looking for local support as they attempt  to purchase their building after the lease owners announced it is up for sale.

Forthspring Inter-Community Group – which services both communities in West Belfast – has been operating on the Springfield Road for 26 years. However, the group are now facing a unique challenge of trying to buy their own building following the demise of their three founding organisations and the building going up for sale.

Gordon McDade, Project Director at Forthspring, explained their current situation.

“We were originally founded by three faith based groups in 1997," said Gordon. "We were set up by Springfield Road Methodist Church – whose building we have been using for 26 years – Cornerstone Community Group and the Curragh Community of Dominican Nuns who lived on Workman Avenue.

“We were formed the year before the Good Friday Agreement and these three faith based groups set up Forthspring in the Peace Wall. The idea was – and still is – to bring together the two communities. We run a whole rake of activities here to bring communities together.

“We have Springers, which is our after-school care and day care during holidays, which brings together children from five local schools from both sides of the community. We have Moving Up, Moving On, which works with Springfield Primary and St Clare’s Primary and with their families. We have Youth Matters which runs youth clubs and does detached youth work in the streets around here. We also run tea dances and an autism awareness group and much more.

Gordon said the rent for the group's lease has been increased since the pandemic which has been a struggle to adapt to and the sale of the building has now left them applying to purchase it for themselves.

“When our founders went defunct Forthspring as an organisation found themselves parentless but we have still 14 staff here who are working away everyday running our programmes. When we were set up in 1997 we set up with a 50 year lease at 50p per year. When Springfield Methodist Church closed the ownership of the building passed to Belfast Central Mission who are based in the centre of the town. They now own the building and following Covid want to divest themselves of the building.

“They run several projects of their own and have their own set of challenges and have been very open and helpful in their relationship with us but they have currently put the building up for sale and they want to sell the building to us.

WELCOME: President Mary McAleese visited Forthspring in 2007
2Gallery

WELCOME: President Mary McAleese visited Forthspring in 2007

Gordon continued: “However, our lease has now been adjusted so we’ve gone from 50p per year to £15,000 per year. They did it incrementally to help us adjust but it has been a big increase for us to manage. I totally appreciate the financial challengers they are under and they want to sell the building for £175,000 so at the moment we are currently working on raising money to be able to buy it.

“It’s been a very challenging time for us and we’ve been anxious about the future of Forthspring. I have a very good relationship with Belfast Central Mission and we’re very grateful they only want to sell the building to us.

“We really believe in the work we are doing here and we are very grounded and involved with the families in the area who use our services and we recently ran a big Christmas giveaway programme and also supporting kids with learning challenges in schools."

Gordon said Forthspring are currently trying to secure the money needed to keep the building by applying to the UK government’s Community Ownership Fund which is under the UK government’s Levelling Up Department – a department which was created to help organisations following the loss of EU funding due to Brexit.

“Our application is underway and we have several groups supporting us. The fund is explicitly for communities who are in danger of losing a community building but the fund is UK-wide so there is a lot of competition as there are other applicants from England, Scotland and Wales. It’s a very detailed and complex application which has to be in by the end of January."

Gordon said Forthspring have currently received many letters of support (which are a vital part of the application process) and added that Forthspring would be very accepting of anymore from the community, from former service users or other organisations who have worked with Forthspring to strengthen their application.

“You really have to convince the funders that your building is important and that you’re doing important work,” he said. “We feel if we were to lose the building and if we weren’t able to raise the money it would be a significant loss to the community in West and North Belfast and the large number of families we help from both communities here. We don’t want to lose 26 years’ worth of groundwork with our communities.

Gordon continued: “We realised that we hadn’t actually really told the community apart from a few of our service users so the challenges we’ve been facing haven’t been public. We want to tell North and West Belfast now that we’re trying to buy the building and we’re looking for letters of support from people to make people aware that we wish to continue the good work we’ve been doing for 26 years.

“We want to have another brilliant 26 years and we also feel it would be a huge loss with our unique location on both sides of the peace wall. You can walk in on the Springfield Road and out on Workman Avenue so our building is situated right in the middle.

“We are currently setting up a GoFundMe page and are looking for letters of support, our website also has a donate page if anyone should wish to contribute to our campaign to buy the building as well.”

Donations can be made on Forthspring’s website – www.forthspring.org and any letters of support can also be sent to Gordon’s email address at director@forthspring.com