By Lesley Walsh
MORE than 40 decorators from all over Northern Ireland pulled together to give a Dundonald charity premises a total makeover.
Painters signed up to the Paint it Forward initiative, to paint the Helping Hands Autism Resource Centre, inside and out, on Saturday.
Gerard Donaghy of Paintworks NI, who was behind the initiative, revealed that he came up with the idea following a visit to America.
Gerard explained: “It was there that I saw how the community of painters come together and I thought we don’t have that here in Northern Ireland so I wanted to bring as many painters together to do something good for the community, for charities that don’t get much help.
“We reached out on our socials to find out if there was any charity that needed anything that we might be able to help with and a lot of people got in touch and nominated all sorts of charities but in the end there could only be one so we narrowed it down to Helping Hands Autism Centre in Dundonald.
“But we are hoping to make it an annual event to help other charities,” he revealed.
“I have a disabled child myself and I know what it’s like and I know that for places like Helping Hands, their support network for the families and the children is completely volunteer based.
“We would want to let them know what a great job they are doing so we wanted to help. We reached out to the Decorators’ Forum in Northern Ireland to ask if anyone wanted to get involved so we have around 40 to 50 who are going to help,” he said.
“I also asked suppliers if they wanted to reach out to help and Crown Paints in Bangor said they would donate paint; Axus Decor donated all the tools and sundries,” he said.
Gerard added Johnstone’s Decorating Centre of Newtownards and Benjamin Moore, a UK-wide paint firm, also donated paint to the mass decorating effort.
Speaking ahead of the weekend event, Gerard added: “We will have about 50 volunteers on the day; there are so many reasons to be divided here so to bring everybody together is an awesome event and good for the community.”
He paid tribute to all who volunteered their time toward the painting effort, singling out Pamela O’Brien, the manager at Crown Paints in Bangor for ‘going above and beyond the call of duty to help us’.
Pamela said Crown Paints in Bangor was delighted to be involved in the painting job, stating the company was ‘trying to support local charities’ as part of its social responsibility programme.
Caroline Birch of Helping Hands, explained how the charity’s Dundonald premises managed to secure the goodwill endeavour.
“Someone tagged me in a social media post about a kind of competition and you could put forward any venue. I took pictures to show the premises, and it’s been going for six years and has got grubby and you can imagine the dirty hand prints all over the walls in that time, and the skirting boards were all chipped and it needed painted outside.
“We contacted them and Gerard came down and we did a proposal and explained what kind of difference we make in the community,” she continued.
“Then we got a message that we were the winners,” revealed the Dundonald woman.
As one of the founder members of Helping Hands, and current chairperson, Caroline said the centre caters for 135 children and young people and was managed fully by volunteers and depended largely on charitable donations, but with some of its programmes funded by Children in Need.
It has six rooms on the lower floor and two upstairs where programmes take place.
“We have youth programmes that include sensory activities, life skills, confidence building and making friends which is a big part of it and the social communication skills for that,” she said.
“For the little ones we focus on play and playing together. It’s a full year programme that works during term time,” she said.
