£20k donation will directly fund city wide Mental Health services

Gary of ARC Fitness was named as one of five AXA ‘Community Heroes’ live on the Late Late Show on RTE, and received a £20,000 prize to donate to an organisation of his choice.

He made his donation to the Bogside and Brandywell Health Forum, and told the ‘Journal’ it was nice to “be able to support” the organisation, who had helped him from the start of his ARC journey.

“When I started ARC, it was all very new. It was Bronagh Cooper from the Social Prescribing team who initially connected with me.

“From then, Bronagh supported all of the events that we ran for the community that we have, and other team members came on board and were very helpful in terms of advice and guidance. I had never set up an organisation in the community before.

“They were so supportive and encouraging from the outset, it was nice to be able to support them back,” he said.

Looking to the future, Gary explained he will be stepping down from his job as a mental health nurse in the Western Trust this Thursday, and going full time with ARC.

“We recently secured funding from the National Lottery so I am giving up work on Thursday, and I am full time ARC. Being able to commit full time to this is going to be a game changer, because my attention isn’t divided, we can take more people on. We have committed to taking 120 people on the programme over the next two years with the Lottery.

“We have secured funding from PHA, and also from Learning pool, a local company who are supporting us as well. We are looking about massively expanding what we do in terms of the size of where we are, and the amount of people we can offer the programme to.

“We have adapted really well, we have taken our whole programme and put it online, and actually offered more support than we have before. But we miss the connection, we’re a community,” he said.

Aileen McGuinness, General Manager of Bogside and Brandywell Health Forum, said they “never expected” to receive the £20,000 donation from Gary.

“We provide Mental Health services, we get miniscule funding compared to the need for the services in the area. Our services aren’t just for the people in the Bogside and Brandywell, they are for people city wide.

“We have three counsellors with us, and we bring students in from Ulster University to help with our backlog on our waiting lists. The £20,000 will go into our mental health services.”

Aileen explained that due to Covid restrictions, the team at the Bogside and Brandywell Health Forum have not been able to carry out their regular fundraising activities throughout the year, which fund their mental health services. 

“We do fundraisers throughout the year, bag packing, raffles and flag days, but obviously we haven’t been able to do it with Covid restrictions.

“We also have a social economy that would bring in money that goes into Mental Health services. So we’re really limited in what we can do. This money will go directly in to support mental health services. We have seen around a 70% increase in people coming to us for one-to-one support and counselling,” she said.

From initially referring Health Forum clients to Gary through Social Prescribing, Aileen said that she sat down with the ARC team and gave some advice in relation to funding applications.

“I never expected to get £20,000 for the organisation out of it, it was never in the pipeline.

“But Gary said that from the very start that we had belief in him, and we supported him, which was a big thing for him to keep going. That’s how the relationship developed and is keeping going. We have always offered support to Gary and we will continue to do so.

“The journey that Gary has been on and the work he has been doing, it’s amazing, and I take my hat off to him. He’s done all this stuff by himself.”
“Because we have the social prescribing we have to go out and see what’s going on. Anyone we can help out, we will try and do it because we are seen as a larger community organisation. Any support that we can give anyone that is sorting out, or needs any advice, that may want partnership work, we are always here, our doors are always open and it’s about getting the best for the community and people within the community,” added Aileen.