ANOTHER BIRTHDAY FOR ALPS

Although as a concept and a project it started working from North Belfast in 2014 ALPS itself wasn't officially formed until 2017.

The date was the 13th September 2017 in a kitchen in Downpatrick Co Down when we sat down and officially registered ALPS as it's own stand alone identity and organisation.

We could never have imagined back then the road we would be led on and the places we would be and never in our wildest dreams could we envisage being here for 7 years.

Whilst you may think or only know of Alps as an individual/personality within your own community (alot of people do) this definitely isn't the case.

We are hugely fortunate to have built a remarkable team, with no one person within it with any more importance than anyone else, just one family of now 22 individuals from all corners of the country working day and daily for the benefit of the community and with the one common purpose of supporting others.

Our 7th year has been the busiest yet and the organisation continues to grow each and every day. In the last twelve months we have continued to engage tens of thousands of people in our training and events right across the country as well as in the United States.

In addition to this in this period we have provided access to almost 2000 hours of counselling and talking therapies to the community.

It has also been a hugely successful twelve months for the organisation with ALPS receiving awards for our work from Families First. In October 2023 we were chosen as Northern Ireland Mental Health Awareness Charity of the year with a further award being bestowed upon us in February 2024 with ALPS being named as Family Values charity of the year also.

We owe everything we are today to everyone that has been on our journey from the very beginning, there's so many people that have shaped the organisation into what it has become today and we truly thank them for all of their dedication, determination and support to the organisation from it's inception.

Whilst we mark this day we move forward with the hope we get to mark many more birthdays.

Finally we thank all who support us in our work, we couldn't do anything that we do with out you all behind us.

Onwards and upwards