To mark its 30th anniversary, Limerick’s Northside Family Resource Centre hosted a celebratory event in King Johns Castle on Friday.
The evening featured a series of inputs, entertainment and music with an extensive exhibition of photographs and memorabilia to highlight the Centre’s development and growth over the last three decades.
In 1987, the service was initially set-up from a small Council flat on Clonconnane Road in Ballynanty with the support of Limerick Social Services Council, Limerick City Council and a congregation of outreach sisters led by Sr Ursula O’Reagan.
These humble beginnings focused on a range of informal adult education classes for local residents with associated childcare provided for learners. Over time, the Resource Centre established a strong bonds in the local community and its reputation for services, courses and classes was a flagship project in Ballynanty and across the wider Northside of Limerick City.
In the early 1990s, the then City Council allocated the Centre additional adjoining units of housing and the range of activities and projects increased with the Centre receiving formal funding under the national Family Resource Centre Programme in 1995 which it has retained ever since.
Subsequent funding has been secured since then under other Government measures for childcare, youth work, community education, family support and community development and services to older people.
Mayor Stephen Keary officiated at the ceremony along with inputs from local people associated with the Centre over the decades – former staff, board members, service-users, partner agencies and the wider statutory and voluntary sector in the city.
