New Year’s message from the Chairperson
On behalf of the Directors/Trustees of the Tara Centre I wish to take the opportunity to wish you all a belated peaceful and healthy 2023.
Last year in my New Year message I referred to the on-going impact of the Covid pandemic and our desire to continue to support those in need of our multi-disciplinary holistic, healing and life enhancing services. Thanks to the dedication of our management team and staff we managed to deliver our counselling/psychotherapy and art therapy services throughout the year with our complementary service and workshops/seminars gradually coming on stream during the year. In August 2022 we were especially pleased to be able to once again open our front door at Tara.
In 2023 we can again look forward to all of our services and programmes being available supported by some additional funding from the Mental Health Support Fund which in the second half of 2022 enabled us to recruit additional counsellors/psychotherapists and an Art Therapist. This year also sees the Tara Centre with a new General Manager, Katrina Deas, and a new Co-ordinator of Operational Services, Diane Coyle. They and all of our new staff are most welcome to the Tara family and I wish them well in their new roles. I am confident that Katrina and Diane along with John Friel our Co-ordinator of Therapeutic Services will lead the Tara staff into a positive 2023. This will be an important year for Tara as we will also see the production of a new 3 year business plan. Work has just commenced in terms of undertaking a strategic review which will inform the business plan.
I would like to take the opportunity to say a word of thanks to Niamh Murnaghan who took over the role of chairperson of the Tara Board of Directors/Trustees in July 2022. Niamh remained as chairperson until December when I again resumed the role of chairperson and at the end of December she resigned from her role as a Director due to work commitments. On behalf of all of the Directors and staff I wish to thank her for the enormous contribution she made to the Tara Centre and to wish her well in the future. I should also like to sincerely thank all of our funders and the many friends of Tara who continue to provide much needed financial support to help sustain our services and maintain the welcoming environment which is the Tara Centre.
The Tara Centre spring programme has now been launched and as you will see the Tara vision remains as relevant today as it did when its co-founders Maura Twohig and Mary Daly established Tara almost 27 years ago. The ethos of the Tara Centre remains one of reverence and respect for life, compassion for pain and suffering and a conviction that what hurts can heal. Let us once again go forward in 2023 recognising the need to take care of ourselves, our family, friends, neighbours and the world around us.
Godfrey Young
Chairperson Tara Board of Directors/Trustees
No-one else can see the world the way you see it
No-one else can feel your life the way you feel it.
-John O’Donohue