London City Airport has announced the successful applicants to its latest round of 2022 grants from the airport’s £75,000 Community Fund.
In total, £35,683 of funding has been awarded to 13 local groups and community organisations, covering seven East London boroughs, including Newham, Hackney, Lewisham, Redbridge, Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest and Barking & Dagenham. Each successful applicant will receive grants of up to £3,000 to enable important and positive change in their local communities.
Successful grantees that have secured funding in this latest round include Breaking Barriers, who are working with refugees across East London boroughs, supporting them back into employment through training and development. Also securing funding was Bags of Taste, who are based in Hackney and work with people from marginalised communities to enable them to purchase and cook healthy meals on a budget.
Commenting on the award, Matt Powell, CEO of Breaking Barriers CEO said:
“At Breaking Barriers we’re so grateful to London City Airport’s Community Fund for awarding us this grant. This is an incredibly challenging time for refugee communities. Thanks to this grant, we will be able to reimburse the travel expenses for our clients travelling to access our support in person this year. Thank you so much from the whole Breaking Barriers community.”
Each organisation has been awarded a grant of up to £3,000 in line with the Community Fund’s aims to build stronger, safer and healthier communities – creating pathways to employment, more sustainable communities and raising the aspirations of East Londoners.
Since launching in 2019, London City Airport’s Community Fund is delighted to have awarded Grants totalling more than £270k to 85+ local charities and not-for-profit organisations. The Community Fund has also commissioned a video that highlights the great work the successful awardees have been able to achieve with the funding, as well as promoting it more widely to encourage more local organisations to apply.
Another recipient was Teen Action in Hackney who are working to improve the lives of disadvantaged young women and help them reach their potential. The organisation’s Director, Ellie Phirer, said:
“Teen Action is delighted to receive a £3,000 grant from the London City Airport Community Fund towards our employment entry ‘Get a Job’ program, which will support marginalised young women during this transitional period and on their journeys to employment.”
Inspire EBP, who will run a specialist employability programme for students with Special Educational and Mental Health Needs (SEMH) at Belmont Park School, in Waltham Forest welcomed their award. Business Development Officer, Olivia Fuller, commented:
“The donation from the London City Airport Community Fund will allow us to run a specialist employability programme for a group of ten, year 11 students with Special Educational and Mental Health Needs. Our highly tailored three-part programme will raise the pupils’ aspirations and create pathways into employment by preparing them for work experience, offering supported work placements in local businesses and a comprehensive follow-up.
There has never been a more important time for increased careers support and we cannot thank the London City Airport Community Fund enough for helping us to do so, with some of London’s most vulnerable young people.”
The new funding comes at a critical time for local communities surrounding the airport as East London continues to recover from the impact of the pandemic.
The grants will provide a financial boost to these local organisations working to support marginalised communities affected by the pandemic, covering employment and training for youth, women and refugees; wellbeing, physical and mental health; food poverty and sustainability.
The 13 local community groups receiving this latest round of funding are based in or are active in the following seven London boroughs: Newham, Barking & Dagenham, Hackney, Lewisham, Redbridge, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest. Breaking Barriers are supporting refugees in all 13 local boroughs.
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Notes to Editors
The London City Airport Community Fund is a registered charity. no.1182642
New community trustees have been onboarded for 2022.
The Board of Trustees comprises:
- Duncan Alexander, London City Airport Consultative Committee (Independent Chair)
- Tessa Simpson, Head of Environment and Technical Operations
- Francesca Pacifico, Head of Sustainability
- Liam McKay, Director of Corporate Affairs
- Councillor Gen Kitchen, Deputy Cabinet Member for Community Wealth Building, Inclusive Economy and Air Quality, London Borough of Newham
- Councillor Kam Rai, Deputy Leader Redbridge Council Cabinet Member Finance, Leisure and Culture
- Raina Gee, Redbridge, Youth Involvement Worker
Further information on the Community Fund is available at:
https://www.londoncityairport.com/corporate/responsible-growth/community-fund/
Interested parties are invited to apply to the next round of grants, with the application window due to close on 1st July 2022. Prospective applicants should contact Community.Fund@londoncityairport.com with any queries or questions.
Applications to the latest funding round closed on 7th January 2022 and the Board of Trustees considered a total of 58 applications from local groups and charitable organisations.
A judging panel reviewed the applications and scored them against a consistent set of criteria, with applicants asked to demonstrate how the funding would be used to support the Community Fund’s key themes of:
- Building stronger, safer and healthier communities
- Creating more sustainable and greener communities
- Creating pathways into employment
- Raising aspirations for East Londoners
The Community Fund was launched in 2019 and provides £75,000 funding annually to support local charities and organisations that represent inclusive and diverse communities across East London.
Applications are invited twice per year and considered by a Board of Trustees comprised of representatives from London City Airport and the local community, alongside an independent chair.
Grants of up to £3,000 are available for charities and not-for-profit organisations who can demonstrate their ability to enable important and positive change for communities surrounding the airport.
Further information on the 13 organisations that have been successful in securing grants in the latest funding round are detailed below, grouped by the East London Borough in which they are primarily based or supporting.
Newham
Caramel Rock Fashion Master Class Programme, will specifically support young people under the age of 25 into training and facilitate work placements for them. Our inbuilt leadership training programme, facilitated by volunteers, will build participants’ resilience and help them feel secure and capable to secure work opportunities within Newham.
Green Schools Project CIC Zero Carbon Schools is a programme that engages pupils in efforts to reduce their school’s carbon emissions. This helps young people to develop valuable skills that will help them in their own lives and enable them to lead the change to a more sustainable society.
Through Zero Carbon Schools, pupils are offered the opportunity to run various projects such as monitoring and reducing energy usage, encouraging sustainable travel to school, and reducing carbon emissions from the food eaten at school. The skills pupils will develop on the programme – problem solving, teamwork, leadership, communication – will be hugely valuable for their own futures.
ELREM FOUNDATION CIC aim is to address the feelings of exclusion and isolation through a well-managed and marketed Deaf-led instructor DeafCycling.uk pilot program, ensuring every Deaf child can participate in Bikeability Training and go onto enjoy a lifetime of safe cycling, whether alone or in groups. The program will have a trickle-down effect on the children’s parents and/or guardians too, who may not have had the opportunity to learn to cycle from an early age – and they would like to expand the program with the help of partners Bikeworks CIC, to include Adults and Seniors. They have partnered with Newham-based, Bikeworks, to introduce the DeafCycling.uk program due to their extensive experience in providing access to all through their Inclusion Program.
All East London Boroughs
Breaking Barriers Employment Programme will provide tailored, 1:1 employment advice and guidance to 80 people from a refugee background living within the local boroughs. This project aims to help refugees acquire the knowledge, confidence and experience to enter stable, fulfilling employment.
Our work also has a proven record of raising the aspirations of those that we support. Our clients routinely complete Impact Surveys which measure “soft” outcomes like our clients’ perceived confidence.
Topics covered in a 1:1 employment session include CV and cover letter writing, job searching and interview practice. This is complemented by English and IT courses at varying levels. We partner with 20 businesses including Grant Thornton, IKEA and Mayer Brown, with whom we provide our clients with skills workshops, paid work placements and permanent job opportunities.
Barking and Dagenham
Kingsley Hall Church and Community Centre The ‘Cooking Together’ initiative: The project will engage a wide range of local people with healthy cooking, making connections, reducing food poverty and celebrating cultural diversity. Our trained chef will lead cooking sessions for up to five people, giving people better cooking skills, understanding of healthy cooking and making connections locally. With your sponsorship we would run 15 sessions:
We are supporting 400 people, including 220 families, and currently providing 1,500 essential items each week. We believe that this project will help to build a stronger and healthier community by removing the stigma of healthy but affordable cooking, and by bringing groups of people together who are in similar situations. We hope that the cooking together sessions will spark friendships and reduce isolation – and become a conversation starter within the community. The recipe of the month and lending library are also meant to highlight the healthy eating message.
Hackney
Just Kidding is working with Special Educational Needs(SEN)children in the aftermath of COVID -19. Educational payback is hard and heavy, particularly so for SEN children’s education, which stagnated and even regressed during this period. Without significant support, 80% of SEN children will not be able to graduate to the next class.
The complex social skills necessary for confident, responsive, and mutually beneficial interaction with other people are certainly among the most important skills a child must learn.
A person’s social facility has profound implications for nearly every facet of life, both in childhood and in adulthood. A lack of social skills may lead directly to problems in interpersonal relationships or may interfere indirectly with optimal functioning in school, occupational and recreational activities.
Social Station is an afterschool speech and communication club for 45 children who are exhibiting risk factors for autism, sensory issues, anxiety or communication related disorder.
Young and Inspired advocates for over 430 children, young people and young families; inhibited by inter-generational poverty and its subsequent challenges; living in inner city Hackney and neighbouring boroughs.
Our vision is to empower multiply disadvantaged children and young people to beat financial, social and academic barriers so that they can have a great childhood, a healthy transition into adulthood. We aim to empower them with the tools to break free from the vicious intergenerational cycle of poverty, unemployment and low aspirations. We also aim to strengthen the young family unit, which is the best way of ensuring that children`s physical, emotional and academic needs are met at a holistic and natural level.
This project is geared to give upwards of 90 young families the skills to shop, cook and eat healthy meals as a family, enable a supportive social network for teenaged and marginalised parents including, reducing waste and dependency on food and crises charity, improve physical and emotional wellbeing and strengthen the family unit at its weakest link.
Misgav’s 2 months employment and IT skills project with additional 1:1 skills and on-the job support for 20 learning disabled women (age 18-45+) from Hackney.
The programme is run in two groups divided by level of support and individual needs. Both groups will attend weekly IT course for 9 weeks and four general employment skills trainings (time and money management, effective work communication, soft skills).
The high-needs group of 10 severely disabled women (users with Down’s syndrome, autism, cerebral palsy, global development delay, restricted mobility) will receive basic IT training and practice tasks specifically requested by their current/ potential employers on our employment placement scheme. The lower support needs group of 10 women with moderate learning disabilities will receive more advanced training leading to a ITQ certification.
These users have lost jobs in Covid/ Brexit job cuts and the 2-month programme will also offer them individually tailored 1:1 support in our office to raise their IT skills and improve their employability. Employability trainings will be delivered by our experienced employment support staff with guest trainers – employers from businesses we partner with and a therapist specialising in teaching life skill to learning disabled audience.
Teen Action’s mission is to give marginalised, excluded and disadvantaged young women (many from BAME communities), access to bespoke courses, programs and 1:1 support, helping them to reach their potential; and to ease the transition to adulthood, employment and independent living.
Annually, we support over 200 young women aged 15-19 years, improving participants’ capabilities, confidence, workplace skills, attainment and mental/emotional wellbeing, through a variety of quality youth-led provisions delivered in line with our London Youth Gold Quality Mark, a programme accredited by City & Guilds.
‘Get a Job’ is our essential employability spring-summer program, which provides an introduction to entering the workforce for young women transitioning to employment and has been developed to reflect the pandemic/ post-pandemic work environments and the opportunities and challenges they present.
Lewisham
Young Lewisham Project offers supportive alternative vocational programs to young people who may not be achieving their full potential in mainstream education and are vulnerable/at risk or involved with the police or youth offending teams. YLP supports young people to become confident, active citizens and take responsibility for their lives. Our weekly programme includes motorcycle & bicycle maintenance, carpentry, furniture restoration, art, drama and theatre sessions, cooking and gardening. We give young people the skills, knowledge and confidence to progress onto further education/training or employment.
Tower Hamlets
Bags of Taste tackles food poverty at source, supporting vulnerable people who live in poverty so they can be happier, healthier and have better finances. Our work means that people can be more reliant on themselves to prepare healthy, affordable food for less than £1 a portion and this creates stronger and healthier communities.
Pre-pandemic, we were running face to face cookery courses in the community however we have now completely repurposed our offer and have delivered nearly 1,600 Mentored home cooking courses. We are reaching new audiences – single parents, people with severe anxiety/mental health issues and people with hearing impairments who would not ordinarily access face to face courses.
Tower Hamlets is one of the most deprived boroughs of London with 57% of children living in poverty, food bank usage has skyrocketed and the recent cut to universal credit has meant that this situation has worsened. We empower and give people the tools, so they are in control of what they and their families eat now and this impacts on future generations.
Waltham Forest
Inspire Education Business Partnership works across the London boroughs of Hackney, Camden, Islington and beyond. Working with up to 15,000 young people each year, we deliver a combination of in-school and workplace-based activities to help young people aged 3-24 see and understand the world of work.
We will run a specialist employability programme for a group of ten vulnerable year 11 students with Special Educational and Mental Health Needs (SEMH) at Belmont Park School, an alternative provision based in Waltham Forest. Our highly tailored three-part programme will raise the pupils’ aspirations and create pathways into employment by preparing them for work experience, offering supported work placements in local businesses and a comprehensive follow-up.
The COVID crisis has already had a significant impact on young people with disruption to schooling, and this is disproportionately affecting those who already experience disadvantage; it is estimated that only 5% of vulnerable students engaged with home learning during the pandemic, impacting on both their behaviour and engagement now that they are back full-time.
Redbridge
Healthy Living Projects Limited are supporting vulnerable women attending the Welcome Centre, our flagship day provision for homeless/vulnerable adults. Typically, the Centre receives over 45 client visits per day. Of the people we come into contact, 100% are unemployed, 84% are representative of Eastern European, Black and Asian minority groups and up to 80% with a mental health diagnosis (depression, Bi-polar Disorder, Post-Traumatic Stress, Schizophrenia, dual diagnosis with drug/alcohol dependency). Our aim is to help those that we work with to live independent healthy, fulfilled lives by addressing their complex needs, language barriers and poor basic skills.
The Welcome Project supports, on average, 45 people on a daily basis presenting with challenging and difficult behaviour. People may be in crisis due to homelessness, experience food poverty, or have severe mental health disorders, exacerbated by their misuse of alcohol and/or drugs. Through regular engagement and support from our expert team, people’s physical and mental health improves, their lifestyle becomes less chaotic, their use of drugs/alcohol reduces including their involvement in crime/anti-social behaviour. People gain new hope for the future and start to consider their aspirations.
