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A collapse in charitable funding due to the world financial crisis has claimed one of its first casualties - a group that runs recreational activities for disabled youth.
Recreate Auckland Trust made its one fulltime and two part-time staff redundant yesterday after legal advice that it could not keep trading when it had run out of money to pay them.
"Out of the goodness of their heart they have agreed to come in without pay and tidy things up," said trust chairwoman Carol Chouhfeh.
But she will meet ASB Trust chief executive Jenny Gill today in a last-ditch effort to keep the group afloat. She has also appealed to Social Development Minister Paula Bennett, who has passed the issue to her ministry's Office for Disability Issues.
The Recreate Trust was set up by parents of young people with disabilities in 2002 after the main support agency for the physically disabled, CCS, stopped running "separatist" activities for the disabled and decided to encourage disabled people into mainstream activities with non-disabled people.
It now runs after-school, weekend and holiday programmes, including outdoor camps, for disabled youngsters from 541 families across the Auckland region.
The trust has never received Government funding. Parents receive subsidies through the health system for carer support, but about half the trust's costs of $120,000 a year come from other charitable trusts, with the biggest amounts from the ASB Trust and the Lottery Grants Board.
The ASB Trust gave $75,000 in November 2007, but the part-time staffer who applies for grants, Wendy Mauer, said Recreate could not apply for more until it had spent all of the 2007 grant and submitted an "accountability report" to ASB.
The ASB Trust recently cancelled its normal funding round for the first half of this year and plans only one round later in the year when the full effect of the collapse in world investment markets will be clearer. However, Ms Gill said Recreate could have applied again in the last funding round last November, even though it still had a small amount of its 2007 grant to spend.
"The [ASB] Trust is open to receiving a subsequent application from them," she said. "We have a very limited capacity to help groups that we fund regularly that get into trouble.
Ms Bennett said she realised that community groups such as Recreate faced "challenging times ahead".
The Office for the Community and Voluntary Sector and two community umbrella groups are holding a workshop on the crisis on February 25 "to identify what may happen and what can be done to lessen any negative impacts [and maximise positive ones]".
