Annual Celebration Event

Last week, we were thrilled to welcome supporters of Rising Sun to join us at our Annual Celebration Event.

It was an honour to celebrate another year of impact, growth and achievements in our work towards ending domestic abuse with so many of our professional partners, fundraisers, survivors, volunteers and members of our community.

After enjoying a range of delicious cakes from Mama Feel Goods in Bekesbourne, our guests were welcomed to the event by Fran Ellis, our Chief Executive. Fran gave an insightful overview of the previous year, speaking about the specialist services that we offer to victim-survivors and the impact that our work has.

One survivor shared:

“The Rising Sun support was like winning the lottery. I do not feel I would be here without the dedicated staff, and the wrap around support was amazing. Rising Sun gave me the strength to carry on through the hardest journey of my life and now I am free, stronger and happier.”

At our Annual Celebration Event, we like to include a ‘Services Spotlight’ to offer a deeper insight into our specialist services. This year, we had the pleasure of hearing from our Hospital IDVA and Adolescent Girls team. As always, their talks were incredibly insightful and inspirational.

Our Adolescent Girls team support 11-16-year-olds through one-to-one mentoring and a group programme called Guiding Lights. One of our mentors, shared a comprehensive overview of the specialist service demonstrating the impact of their work. One mum whose daughter received support from Rising Sun shared:

“She is certainly, from our eyes, appearing more trusting with adults around school and her confidence is shining through. She has been more confident to speak up and answer questions in class, but also in group work where she now offers role play situations in front of others which she never did before (drama, music, dance, also careers based work. So once again, thank you for everything the group has done for her.”

Over the past year, the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion team have been working hard to boost our representation and engagement with more diverse members of the community.

We have improved our approaches to information-gathering in order to understand who is accessing our services and where we might need to target our resources. Similarly, we have grown our links with local specialists such as those delivering mental health services and working with minoritised community members. This is to ensure that we’re reaching a wider group of service users while offering bespoke domestic abuse training where required.

Perhaps our most significant achievement this year is the completion of phase one of our consultation with team members, service users and the wider community on how Rising Sun can meet the needs of an increasingly gender diverse population. This exercise is designed to ensure that we can continue to provide an excellent service to those who need it, and to explore the different ways of working that are available to us to achieve this aim.

Each year, we hope that our Annual Celebration Event is an opportunity for members of our community to learn more about the specialist work of Rising Sun and also inspire them to continue supporting our work. Below, is a quote from Abena Akuffo-Kelly, Mayor of Folkestone, which demonstrates the importance of events such as this.

“Today at Rising Sun, I found out first hand what a truly amazing, life changing charity it is. The statistics speak for themselves. But, also the enthusiasm of the workers; they were so committed and invested in their work. I’m not surprised they’re making an incredibly positive impact in the lives of the children, parents, guardians, and families that they are working with. I look forward to keeping in touch with them to learn more about what they do and to support them in any way I can.”

Thank you to all who attended our Annual Celebration Event, we can’t wait to do it all again next year.