Engage with Age has just published a report on the impact of its work empowering older people across Belfast to lead happy, healthy, independent and more connected lives.

It is crucial for charities to be able to understand it its work is effective and it they are helping the people they have set out to support.  Over three months from September – November 2024, Engage with Age went through a process of having conversations with the older people it works with to get their views on the difference EWA’s work makes.  There were 429+ surveys, 17 focus groups, 35 interviews with individuals, and 23 case studies produced in order to create a picture of the effectiveness of EWA’s work.

The results have been astounding.

In the 2023/24 period, EWA had 15,000+ direct engagements with older people, delivering over 780 activities, 2,100+ befriending phone calls, with publications reaching more that 5,000 people per month and exhibitions reaching over 30,000 people.

98.6% of those surveyed were satisfied with Engage with Age’s work (77% strong satisfied), 29% were new attenders, 77% said they learned something new, 80% said they do or would use what they have learned, and 95% said they would attend an EWA event again.  The most common things people said about Engage with Age include:  “Great staff”, “Volunteers do a great job”, “Lovely people”, “very good”.

The Impact Report has 26 pages of detailed analysis.  To read the report, click HERE.