2019 ANNUAL REPORT

The Community Resource Centre. The Centre still remains the hub of the majority of services on offer in our local community and continues to be very busy. We had some excitement in March this year when the television cameras arrived from BBC Scotland to film 4 of our staff having a bake-off style competition to see who was the best baker in the workplace! The results were revealed on the program televised in July. It was great fun for all involved and for the staff at the Centre and a great opportunity to showcase what the Resource Centre and Maud has to offer. The Centre continues to be actively involved in some key initiatives for the community offering a range of activities and support to all and this is something we continue to develop.

There has been some upgraded work carried out this year, the major being resurfacing of the car park, improved lighting between car parks and the conversion of an office into a consulting room to accommodated for the increased requirement of the medical groups.

1) Central Buchan Medical Group – The surgery has been operating for over a year now and has been a welcome service to the Resource centre. More Maud folk have joined the surgery and the link up with the doctors / nurses from Central Buchan and with other professionals in the building is a real benefit to all and has helped to develop additional health care services operating out of the building. This is something that we will continue to develop in the long-term. All other services continue to run well and the building continues to attract more hot desk workers (we have had to install 4 additional desk spaces in the main office).

2) During the Aberdeenshire Wellbeing festival, we again linked up with the school to run the popular pedometer challenge! It’s a great fun way of getting the children to be more active and the teachers also! As they compete to see which team can walk the furthest in a week.

3) Conversation café – The Conversation Café continues to go from strength to strength. The café has helped many in our communities to meet new friends, get support and advice, have an interest and help develop a stronger community spirit. This year (as in previous years) we again ran a number of children’s events in the summer holidays, which were very well attended. The café volunteers also gave their time this year to supporting another community project run by parents and the school – J-rock. They helped with the making of scenery and costumes and were pleased to see that Maud came 2nd in their local area challenge held in Aberdeen. The café again took part in an Aberdeenshire wide conversation café at Haddo House in May.

4) The gym continues to be a popular facility in the community and is constantly evolving to include new classes and fitness support for all users. We are currently looking into some new and different classes for the Autumn (details to follow). We have recently linked up with the Active Schools Co-ordinator and hope to very shortly be running gym sessions for teenagers to help them access fitness in a supervised environment with the aim of getting our young folk more active and keeping them healthy. Our Health Referral Scheme – Our ABC project (Active Buchan Community) continues to be as popular with health professionals and we have a lot of people currently on the scheme. With Central Buchan now in the building we are finding referrals into the scheme are coming much more frequently. In addition, as word spreads about the benefits more people are keen to sign up. We had a fundraiser in May (5k & 10K runs) for the scheme and we were able to raise £310. It was our first run, with the intention being to get us on the run circuit and attracted 31 participants who all raved about the course and are keen to do again. We will be doing the run again next year at the same time. We also received funding from the NHS endowment fund of £2500. Our last fund raiser was in August where we did our spinathon again, this year we raised £678.

Crèche continues to be used and a great support for mums in the area wishing to either use the gym or just have some time to themselves. It is still operated on Friday mornings and opens to all who wish to use the facility or just need some time out!

The Community Service Centre

Café – The café is still working hard to manage costs and everyone there is doing a great job of this, it continues to offer a good range of lovely food and everyone is working together to ensure its continued success. We thank them all for the hard work and commitment that they put in to drive the café.

Service Centre- unfortunately the charity shop Willows was unable to make a success of their charity shop in our unit and they moved out in April this year. In addition, the private podiatrist we had has also moved on as her circumstances changed with her and her husband starting a family. We were able to fill this unit quickly with S & D Homes a soft furnishing business. We currently have 1 unit available to rent.

The Brighter Village Scheme –We were not awarded any prize for this year in the Village in Bloom competition, which is a shame as the village looked lovely throughout the summer. Our thanks once again go to those dedicated people who have helped to maintain gardens, planters and grass areas throughout the year their efforts are very much appreciated

Once again, the help and support the Trust receives to maintain the services that we provide is very much appreciated by the Directors and Management team alike. It is our intentions to offer a good service to the community and at the same time examine ways to improve. Thank you.

Thank you.

Report prepared by V. Brown – General Manager. 24/09/2019