The Northern Ireland Association for Spina Bifida and Hydrocephalus

It sometimes seems that there isn't a great deal of good news around but for the Regional Office of ASBAH in Northern Ireland that isn't the case today. The Big Lottery Fund (BIG) has announced the award of almost half a million pounds to ASBAH in

Northern Ireland.

The details from the announcement are as follows:

The grant of £493,617 will be used to fund the Getting the Break project which will improve the health and well-being, training opportunities, and confidence of a greater number of people with these debilitating conditions, their families and carers. The project will run a range of training programmes that will encourage people to learn new skills, improve their self-esteem and gain independence including daily living skills, confidence building, speaking in public, an introduction to employment, IT skills and sport and recreation.

This is a truly fantastic achievement and our warmest congratulations  must go to all those involved in the successful bid for this  substantial funding. Putting in these bids is a complex and necessarily bureaucratic process and to win through after a lot of hard

 work is quite remarkable.

ASBAH have already been in touch with a range of interests and stakeholders to help them plan the administration and most effective use of the funding and a number of exciting possibilities are in the pipeline. Apart from that this breakthrough provides

a golden opportunity to develop a much closer and positive working relationship between the various ASBAH interests in Northern Ireland.

As plans are developed information will be circulated as widely as possible on an on-going basis