We were delighted to welcome so many interested parties and supporters of the work we do, to our AGM this week, when we were able to report on the activities of Women’s Aid NEL between April 2022 and March 2023.

There were over 30 people present, with representatives from our own employees, volunteers, ambassadors, other agencies and interested parties. All of whom we thank for coming along and taking an interest in the work we do.

The report focused on performance, outcomes and the impact of the services we delivered and identified that we directly supported 760 clients, including 104 in the Refuge, 435 through outreach services and 221 women completing our ‘Freedom’ program.

The number of clients supported through the different services was:

• Refuge 104
• Outreach 435
• Freedom 221

     Total     760

We were also delighted to be able to report that client feedback told us that 93% of clients felt safer after coming to Women’s Aid, 89% said we helped them to make more sense of the abuse, 91% said their self-worth and self-belief had been increased and 91% said that staff had helped them emotionally.

• 93% of clients felt safer after coming to Women’s Aid
• 89% said we helped them to make more sense of the abuse
• 91% said their self-worth and self-belief had been increased 
• 91% said that staff had helped them emotionally

These are a sample of a number of comments taken from our ‘Measuring Change’ forms and give us great confidence that the work we do makes such a difference:

“I can’t thank you enough, I can’t believe how much our lives have changed”

“No-one understands how scary this all is, except you, I can’t say thank you enough times”

“I love my new house, I don’t want to leave here but I can’t wait to move in”

We currently operate four retail charity shops and an Ebay shop, manned in the main by an army of volunteers, whose efforts go towards supporting the work we do and the services we provide.

We opened our ‘Willows” shop in March this year, adding to the other three located around the area and across all shops, our hard-working volunteers processed 29,451 bags of donations:

• Tiverton Street, Cleethorpes
• Hainton Square, Grimsby
• Nunsthorpe Shop, Second Avenue, Grimsby
• Willows Shop, Wingate Parade, Grimsby

We’re always amazed and humbled at the amount of work our 145 volunteers do in a range of roles, including Shop Volunteers, Women’s Centre Reception and The Trustees Management Board.

Having worked a total of 27,705 volunteer hours over the year, even calculated at minimum wage, this saved the charity £263,192!

Outside of the services we deliver to survivors of domestic abuse, we delivered 58 Domestic Abuse Workshops to a total of 797 attendees, raising awareness of the scourge of domestic abuse.

These workshops are delivered to employees within companies and organisations, as well as individuals just wanting to know more.

At the beginning of 2023, we commissioned the services of an independent marketing company TWO.Marketing, who are helping us to communicate our message to those suffering domestic abuse, as well as individuals and companies, through social media, email newsletters and a new initiative for Women’s Aid our Corporate Partnership Program, more of which we will describe in next year’s report.