25 February 2010
Before Christmas 2009, Gill, Nick, Zahra and I travelled to North Wales to meet with people who had contacted The FAN Charity, expressing an interest in setting up a FAN Group in their area. During our Northern adventures, we also aimed to generate interest in FAN Groups by publicising FAN across the various towns. The 'FAN Tour' started in Wrexham where we met with one or two people interested in setting up a FAN Group in the area and to attend the official launch of 'The All Wales Community Cohesion Strategy' attended by Dr Brian Gibbons (former Minister for Social Justice and Local Government.) The FAN Charity has welcomed the strategy's inclusion of information about FAN's work in the community. The document has given the charity much credibility and publicity across Wales so we were very pleased to accept an invitation to attend the event. Helped by the presence of a FAN Information Stand and Display, the event helped us spread information about FAN and network with various Community Groups and Community Workers from Wrexham. We hope our time spent in Wrexham oiled the wheels for the start of the Wrexham FAN Group! Our next visit was to Rhyl, where we attended a coffee morning at St Mary's Roman Catholic Church organised by the West Rhyl Community Company. The group meet every Friday and chat over a hot drink and a biscuit. We were very grateful that the organisers of the group allowed us to show the FAN Meeting DVD and give a demonstration of a FAN meeting, with everyone from the group joining in the meeting. The meeting topic was 'music' and we learned much about each other in a short space of time, with many of us sharing common music tastes! Everyone enjoyed the meeting and there was interest at the group about hosting a FAN Meeting in Rhyl sometime in the future. Our next stop was Llandudno to visit the 'Ty Hapus' Community Centre. The centre organises various activities for the communities of Tudno and Mostyn. The Director of Ty Hapus, Bob Wilding, has made previous enquiries about The FAN Groups and is interested in running a group himself at the centre. During our visit of the centre we joined a Christmas party and recorded a radio interview for Tudno FM, Llandudno's community radio based at the Ty Hapus Centre. During the interview we were asked about FAN Groups in Cardiff and our hopes for FAN Groups spread to North Wales. We were very grateful to the warm welcome from the friendly staff and wish the Ty Hapus Centre much success in the future. Since our 'FAN Goes North Tour' we have received many enquiries from the towns we visited.
We would like to give a very special thank you Nick for his help and hard work during the trip to North Wales. We would also like to give a special thank you to Zahra for all help, pleasant nature and for all the refreshments she prepared for the trip!