Opening Our Doors
On Tuesday 15th September 2015, we held an Open Evening and Annual General Meeting to showcase our organisation.
The sensitive nature of the work we undertake, with women at risk of sexual exploitation and caught up in prostitution, means that our direct work with women often goes on behind closed doors, in spaces that feel safe and familiar to the woman accessing our support. Our supporters, funders and colleagues may have a good knowledge, understanding and empathy of parts of our work, but may not have a full knowledge of the breadth of our services and our exact methods and approaches.
The Open Evening was an opportunity to present our services (Street Outreach & Evening Drop In, Prison Inreach, Floating Support, STEPS, One to One Befriending and the Feeling Safe Project 18-24years) in a visual way. We set up displays for each of the services we deliver and accompanied our visitors on a journey, in the same way we hope our service-users journey, from the streets and prison, and facilitated by Floating Support and our Feeling Safe project, to our transitional services of STEPS course and one to one befriending.
The Open Evening was attended by colleagues from The Children’s Society, CRASAC, Coffee Tots, Horizon CSE Team, St Peter’s Centre, YMCA, Valley House, National Council of Social Concern, Creative Optimistic Vision, the Anchor Centre and CWPT Integrated Sexual Health Service.
Project Manager (Operations) Nicola Smith reflects on KairosWWT’s 16 year history
Project Worker Jenny Comery and Trustee Penny Drayton share a moment
Trustee Thea Raisbeck champions our volunteers
Chair Dr Jane Osmond meets and greets our visitors
Support Worker Valerie Seymour showcases our Evening Drop In
Our Annual Report was available at our Annual General Meeting (and downloadable here) and summarises the work undertaken during 2014-2015. We were proud to use the image one of our service-users created for us on the front cover. Of it, she says ‘The image represents KairosWWT to me as having deep and strong roots. The colours represent he journey you take with women from dark to light and the arms reach in many directions to represent the many links that I see you having into the community, services and other agencies.” We will be enormously proud to wear the same image on our T-shirts for this year’s Fun Run on Sunday 4th October (and you can sponsor the team here!)
The Open Evening and Annual General Meeting was a great opportunity to celebrate our successes. As chair, Dr Jane Osmond summarises:
“This has been another amazing year of achievements for KairosWWT with our strong and committed board of trustees, staff and volunteers supporting 68 courageous women who have reached out and allowed us into their lives.
Our work is underpinned by funding secured by The Big Lottery Fund and the Lloyds Bank Foundation for England and Wales – this will enable us to continue and develop our work over the next three years. We have also developed a new database which will allow us to gather and utilise information about our services and their impact and will enhance our decision-making processes which are always centered around the women we support.
We have consolidated our work around raising awareness of sexual exploitation with young women aged between 18-24 with the development of a new resource Feeling Safe: Knowing Me and Knowing You. Looking forward, we will continue to stand shoulder to shoulder with the women who reach out to us and we are committed to developing and expanding our services to meet their needs.”