Dear Colleagues,

It gives me great pleasure to welcome you all to our first official Annual General Meeting.

For those of you in the know, this may come as a bit of a surprise because the Enable Me Project is in fact, six years old this year.  I won't turn this report into a 'history lesson', but to explain briefly, although Enable Me started in 2005, it did not become a Charitable Company Limited by Guarantee in its own right until January 2010.

‘So, what's happened in the last six years?’ I hear you ask. Well, it has been a quite astonishing journey and I hope you will share my pleasure as I recount some of our successes. Let's start with some maths; in 2005, Enable Me began with a team of 2 disabled volunteers, a handful of able-bodied volunteers and what were in effect, a few workshops that focused on physical disabilities.  Since that inauspicious beginning, we have recruited and trained over 30 disabled volunteers and expanded our service delivery to include workshops on autism, sensory impairments, hidden disabilities, disability sports, emotional health & well-being amongst many others!  

As the feedback and testimonials we have received over the years has shown, our work has had a positive and meaningful impact on over 27,000 children and young people in West Sussex and the south east, and we have delivered our awareness raising activities in more than 75 schools, 6 colleges/universities, 10 youth clubs, as well as over 60 After School Clubs, Holiday Clubs and Inclusion Days.  In addition we have delivered awareness training sessions to over 1000 staff in West Sussex (who work with disabled children & young people and their families) at a variety of Conferences, INSET days and training sessions. And in terms of how these numbers have impacted our own development as an organisation, we have gone from having just one full-time member of staff in 2005 to employing an additional two part-time members of staff and as many as 7 sessional staff during the last 12 months.

But life is about much more than numbers, especially in the Voluntary Sector, where Enable Me works closely with many other disability organisations and other voluntary organisations to help support and improve frontline services and life-chances for disabled people and their families.

At the core of our service, is a commitment to recruiting and training disabled volunteers,providing them with opportunities to learn new skills, improve their confidence and self-esteem and work as part of team that raises disability awareness inthe community.

Last year alone, our volunteers gave over 3300 hours of their time freely to Enable Me; a contribution worth over £50,000 in real terms, which is both staggering and humbling in equal measure!   So I want to thank them on behalf of the Directors and Staff for their amazing dedication and commitment to the project.

So with all this achieved in the last 6 years, what more do we hope to achieve in the coming year?  In terms of our future plans and as part of our aim to achieve the Investors In People Quality Mark in 2012, we have through consultation with our volunteers, staff and partners identified our priorities for the next two years. We have set out in this report what we believe are a set of achievable objectives for Enable Me to work towards, within what is a very difficult and challenging economic climate.

There have been many changes in the last 12 months; a new government, new priorities and a vision of a ‘Big Society’, all of which impacts on small, independent charities like Enable Me.  However regardless of the changes over which we have little or no control we are determined to continue to deliver high quality events to ensure that everyone is enabled both in terms of access and understanding. 

I would therefore like to once again thank EVERYONE for their continuing support, commitment and enthusiasm as we move forward into the next stage of Enable Me’s drive to build strong partnerships in order to increase disability awareness, promote social inclusion and challenge negative attitudes towards disability.