Holiday Activities and Food annual report

Our providers

In 2022 a total of 70 organisations supported the HAF programme in Gateshead. These included:

• 16 primary schools
• 13 youth and community centres
• 12 sports and activity groups
• 7 arts and theatre pop ups
• 5 children's centres
• 4 churches
• 3 secondary schools
• 3 SEND schools
• 3 Jewish young people's support groups
• 2 refugee and asylum support organisations

Marketing

To promote our HAF programme we have a dedicated Brighten the Day webpage. The website features a promotional video for Brighten the Day, activities for families to get involved in outside of the HAF programme and details of the latest programme with how to book. 

This booking page is on a hidden part of the website and a link is given to families in receipt of free school meals so they can access activities in advance. Only when most of the spaces are booked is the page made public so any family can book.

We targeted families directly with a promotional email for our Christmas 2022 programme. The email had an open rate of 54%, many slots were booked by parents directly from the email link. 

Other marketing activity included:

• articles on the council's news story webpages
• press release on funding and activities released to local media
• stories in Council News, our resident's magazine which is distributed to over 95,000 households across Gateshead
• articles in Gateshead Now, our digital e-newsletter which has over 34,000 subscribers
• articles in our internal employee bulletin, distributed to over 4,000 staff
• social media via our corporate Facebook and Twitter pages,(28,000 and 22,000 followers respectively)
• branded HAF pop up stands which are used at activities and events