2018 ANNUAL REPORT

The Community Resource Centre. It is the tenth year since the Centre opened and a celebration will be held of this event during the Conversation Cafe day on the 1st Nov when everyone is welcome. The Centre still remains the hub of the majority of services on offer. It is actively involved some key initiatives for the community offering a range of activities and support.

There has been some upgraded work carried out this year, the major being resurfacing of the car park, improved lighting between car parks and the conversion of an office into a consulting room to accommodated for the increased requirement of the medical groups.

1) Central Buchan Medical Group – After much speculation! the surgery finally took up residence in the building in May this year with a very smooth transition and everything seems to be continuing in this way. More Maud folk have joined the surgery and the link up with the doctors / nurses from Central Buchan and with other professionals in the building is a real benefit to all.

2) Conversation café – The Conversation Café continues to go from strength to strength and numbers attending have grown as we break down the barriers of mental health/loneliness/isolation and continue to encourage everyone in our community to come along enjoy a free cake and cuppa and have a chat. It has helped many in our communities to meet new friends, get support and advice, have an interest and help develop a stronger community spirit. The spin off groups that it gave fruition to have also continued to thrive with one of our groups run by the gym - gentle gym- actually competing against Mintlaw’s golden oldies group in this year’s wellbeing festival and bringing home the trophy! It has also run a number of subsidised bus runs this year they went to St Andrews, and later in the year we have a pantomime trip planned. This year (as in previous years) we again ran a number of children’s events in the summer holidays, which were very well attended and we have seen some newcomers to the Café out of this. We again took part in an Aberdeenshire wide conversation café at Haddo House in May.

3) M.A.S.A (Minds Applying Stem Activities)- We continue to support this great club which encourages our young people of the community (5-18year olds) to get involved in Maths and science in a fun way. It has changed its times recently in order to get more adult volunteers; it is still well attended and is free to all. Runs on a Wednesday evening 5.45-6.45pm

4) The gym continues to be a popular facility in the community and is constantly evolving to include new classes and fitness support for all users. Despite the very hot weather this year the gym continued to do well, which is down to the hard work of all our fitness instructors and the fantastic classes that they produce. In addition, our gym Manager Lewis has been working hard with his team to continue to drive fantastic levels of customer service and support (keeps people coming back) and to keep a varied schedule of classes. In fact, we have just launched a new and much more varied class timetable for the Autumn (you may have received through your door!) which now includes pole fitness, yoga and pound fit.

We also replaced some of our spin bikes this year as their popularity shows no sign of abating and the old ones were starting to deteriorate. Our Health Referral Scheme – We continue to push on with our ABC project (Active Buchan Community) and we have now linked with Move More Aberdeenshire to enable us to support Cancer patients. With Central Buchan now in the building we are finding referrals into the scheme are coming much more frequently. In addition, as word spreads about the benefits more people are keen to sign up. We had a fundraiser in June to raise funds for this – A Spinathon – through which we raised over £1700.

5) Crèche continues to be used and a great support for mums in the area wishing to either use the gym or just have some time to themselves. It is still operated on Friday mornings and opens to all who wish to use the facility or just need some time out!

The Community Service Centre – The Cafe extension has now been built and being fully utilised, it has provided the café with some much-needed additional storage and preparation space. The extension has enabled us to free up unit 5 again and we have successfully rented this out now to the Willows animal sanctuary who will be opening a charity shop in there. They will take residence from the 1st October to start setting up the shop – no date as yet for the official shop opening but we will keep the village posted through the café and village notice boards. They are looking for volunteers to help in the shop so if anyone knows of any interested parties please let Victoria know and she will pass this on.

The café – has been working hard to manage costs in the face of a slight decline in sales, and we anticipate that this will be turned around in the next financial year, especially with the opening of the charity shop which will hopefully help us see to an increase in footfall and make Maud more of a destination village for savvy shoppers!

The Brighter Village Scheme –We were not awarded any prize for this year in the Village in Bloom competition, which is a shame as the village looked lovely throughout the summer. The new planters that Gordon organised looked fantastic and provided a really lovely theme and backdrop for the flowers that they held. With the lovely summer weather conditions and all the colourful planters, we really were a village in bloom! It’s a shame the judges came so late!! Our thanks once again go to those dedicated people who have helped to maintain gardens, planters and grass areas throughout the year their efforts are very much appreciated

Once again, the help and support the Trust receives to maintain the services that we provide is very much appreciated by the Directors and Management team alike. It is our intentions to offer a good service to the community and at the same time examine ways to improve. Thank you.

Thank you.

Report prepared by V. Brown – General Manager. 02/10/2018