Chairperson’s Report

As a charity TDUK entered this year with a lot of unknowns with covid restrictions and financial support ending for the last time. Despite the uncertainty, and further challenges caused by the current cost-of-living crisis, we have had a lot of success and the “better year” that we had hoped for at our last AGM back in October ‘21.

Of the many good things we have been working on I wanted to highlight a few:  

We have explored new ways of bringing in income so we can continue to keep our sessions priced low to be accessible to kids from all backgrounds.

 We have launched new partnerships to grow different aspects of what we can offer and developed new technologies to support them.

 We have been investing in the development of our people, both staff and volunteers. From Canva courses which improve our visual communications, to mentorship programs which will develop into long term schemes, we are already seeing the benefit of these new skills.

 We continue to strive to be a competitive and fair employer to our staff and I’m proud to say we were able to raise employee salaries to mid market rates, and reflective of inflation, earlier this year.  

As always I am grateful to the CDO, Karen, our volunteers and my fellow trustees who have dedicated countless hours in keeping all the TDUK parts moving. It is a pleasure to work alongside you and see the positive impact the charity has on so many young people. I know we will continue to aim high as we go in to 2023 and that we will achieve even more together.