Community Grant Programme

The grant will support a 40-week programme focused on skill development and employment in a creative industry targeted for 15 local BAME working-class young people aged 18–25 years old.

This project will facilitate a BAME Women’s Employment Support Programme recruiting disenfranchised women living in Tower Hamlets including carers and single parents.

Ocean Estate’s Youth Social Action programme is co-designed and co-produced by local young people, living in the local wards who are NEET aged 13-25 years old.

YOH will engage 2 cohorts of 22 young people aged 14-18, develop aspirations, promoting entrepreneurship, and introducing skills available in and around Canary Wharf. 

The Spear Programme will assist 16-24-year-olds not in education, employment, or training (NEET) in developing skills and mindsets for employment success.

This project will provide a range of walking and workshops to improve participants mental and physical health and wellbeing.

Our funding will enable this heavily attended seniors centre an extra day a week to provide activities and a hot meal for local senior citizens in Stepney and nearby TH Wards. CWG will also look to support them again with volunteering opportunities for our staff to support with running their programme of activities to their users.

Shadwell Community Project will run 30 sessions for children aged 5-12 years and intergenerational events addressing gardening, nature education, bush craft and cooking, which aligns well with our biodiversity goals.

Our grant will support delivery of the Companions@R-Urban, a programme of workshops and events addressing health and wellbeing through engagement with nature, food and gardening. The programme will be delivered during May to September 2024, reaching 125 residents with a focus on biodiversity and engagement on the Teviot Estate in Poplar.

St. Luke’s will provide school-term-time one-hour baby and toddler music sessions over a period of 12 months once a week (39 hours per year) or twice a week (78 hours per year) for pre-schoolers and their parents.

NOUR will provide counselling and support to women who have experienced abuse including mental health support with trained counsellors.

Our grant will assist with the foundation’s year-long theatre project for the LBTQ community targeting migrant communities. There was discussion as to the impact of this project, but the panel acknowledged the support this community requires in terms of addressing isolation. The panel agreed with the grant recommendation of £5,000.

Funding awarded to support delivery of a series of 8-week mindful nature photo walks over the year, designed to enhance physical and mental well-being, and educate on sustainability and biodiversity. A body of work/photography by participants attending the photography workshops will be showcased in our Newfoundland Community Window.

WEN in partnership with Mohila Ongon Bengali women’s collective will deliver an annual Bengali fruit and veg festival.

Sponsorship of the Mayor’s Cup Football Tournament 2024 taking place in August/September. The tournament will engage both youth and adult teams with approximately 9,000 individuals taking part and over 1,000 spectators at Victoria Park and Mile End pitches.

Many of the children on the Will Crooks Estate have not been able to keep up with their education since Covid and many have very little support as parents have insufficient English skills to support their children. Our grant will offer extra-curricular tutoring for two sessions per week, one to young people in years 6 and 7 (the transition between Primary and Secondary), and the second session for young people in years 8, 9 and 10 to assist their studies and help them to reach their potential.

Many of the children on the Will Crooks Estate have not been able to keep up with their education since CovThis grant will support the Tower Hamlets Schools Library Service’s Annual Book Awards. Six new books are donated to each school in Tower Hamlets aimed at students aged 10-13 years. The books are read and the students vote for their favourite and an art competition invites artistic responses to one of the books. At a Grand Finale event in November eight schools will present their favourite book to an audience of around 350 children from participating schools. A panel of authors will then judges the presentations and presents prizes. This initiative aims to encourage children to read and share the pleasure of it with others.

The Homework Club will be led by qualified teachers and supported by youth workers. Weekly sessions during term-time will include group sessions to motivate young people to persevere with their schoolwork, provide coaching on key-skills and topics and provide 1-2-1 support to individual children with homework they are struggling to complete. The project is focused on young people in Tower Hamlets who experience high levels of deprivation and hopes to improve the student’s attainment, wellbeing and optimism as well as reduce anxiety for parents who feel unable to support their child.

Union Stage Kids is a 30-week extra-curricular performing arts programme delivered by local artists at Poplar Union, focused on creativity and inclusion. Children, aged 5-12, who do not have access to the arts due to cultural or socio-economic barriers, will have the opportunity to explore diverse aspects of performing arts, with a new topic each week e.g., creating poetry, playwriting, voice and stage presence, directing. The project will culminate in a play created, directed, and performed by the participants at the St Paul’s Way Festival.

Christ Church Primary are preparing a gardening space for the students and parents to use. Our donation will fund workshop sessions for all students to learn about gardening and growing flowers and food. Most of the children live in flats so they will not have had the experience of planting something and watching it grow.

The Learning Advisory Service will support over 30 Primary schools across Tower Hamlets to offer disabled children and those with complex medical conditions sports events. Often these children dont access after school sports or facilities due to barriers to participation. the project brings community sport; sporting opportunities and aspirations to disabled children across the borough.

Diverse Voices is a playwriting programme to empower, predominantly Asian, black & ethnically diverse, students at Central Foundation Girls’ School through delivering a series of playwriting activities.

Nine taster workshops will introduce the basic elements of playwriting (creating characters and writing a dramatic scene) to 270 participants. A group of 20 students will go onto 9 in-depth workshops to write their own play, engage in a Q&A with a local playwright, and have a theatre excursion.The project will culminate in a professional showcase of plays by the young people to an audience at the school.

The Sign Language Project will be delivered across 30 weeks by bringing in a qualified instructor to teach participants sign language. It is open for members of the community aged 14+. Wapping Youth centre will deliver the sessions every Tuesday and participants will work towards the Level 1 UK BSL qualification.

Upon completion members will be paired with 5 deaf people who are seeking befriending. The members will then create a sign language community for deaf people to make friends. Furthermore, throughout the process they will fundraise to create more deaf awareness tutors who can teach this qualification to other peers.

Sport Inspired will be able to be able to set up after-school sports clubs with their local partner schools including Lansbury Lawrence Primary, Manor Field Primary, Arnhem Wharf Primary, Old Ford Primary, Cubitt Town Primary, Halley Primary, Culloden Primary, Our Lady and St Joseph Primary. Sport inspired will fund after-school clubs to facilitate a positive behaviour change in children as they continue to carry out a sport they enjoy.

SocietyLinks aim to prevent NEETs by providing support and early intervention to around 50 15/16 year olds about to take their GCSE Exams. Providing Maths tuition; overcoming individualised barriers and filling in gaps left by Covid closures.The young people will also think about their future and reignite their aspirations from pre-covid times, with support with university applications; finding work and applying for vocational courses.

Tower Hamlets schools are inclusive, which means most children go to their local school, which means children with Down Syndrome may never see another person like themselves. This funding is for World Down Syndrome Day and a celebration of what it means to be a young person with DS. A performance will be designed and delivered by the young people, they will gain confidence and new skills through working with professionals, celebrate their strengths and have fun putting on a show which is filmed and then can be shared to promote inclusion.

This donation will go towards the 2023 Neighbourhood Schools Programme. Specialism in singing and song-writing enables equal participation and requires no previous musical experience from participants. The 2023 programme has a mindfulness theme and will work with approximately 1300 children and young people aged 7-16 across East London and up to 9 Neighbourhood Schools.

FabricWorks, the textile social enterprise training programme, has supported local long-term unemployed migrant BAME women in learning garment production skills since 2015. This 12-month programme will focus on supporting up to 144 migrant Bangladeshi women in Limehouse with three sewing projects, providing 100 supported workdays in the professional production team, free weekly studio drop-ins, 10 specialist workshops for high-skill textile work, and individual microenterprise, ongoing requestable information, advice, and guidance support for complex issues.

Knock The Door Down was set up by seasoned BAME artists, teachers and creative practitioners with a remit to “engage under-represented audiences through education, experiences and stories, inspired by life, told in extraordinary sometimes fantastical situations”. This project will run from September to December and remove the barrier for Tower Hamlets residents of low-socio economic and/or ethnic minority backgrounds to be involved in theatre by providing free access to the family comedy whodunnit show Marriage is Murder playing at The Brady Arts Centre Theatre in November 2023. This project will also provide volunteering and training for 10 students or unemployed residents with professional artists on a stage show that will be seen by 600 live audience members and over 1500 online viewers.

Screen Share UK collects used and faulty laptops from individuals and businesses and uses the power of volunteers to repair and refurbish them to distribute them to refugees and sanctuary seekers free of charge as a permanent gift. They receive numerous requests for tech from Tower Hamlets residents and have tech volunteers in three different Tower Hamlets wards.

The Preparing for Employment Project will help local unemployed and economically inactive people aged 25+ into employment in the catering/hospitality sectors. To help support fifty long term unemployed Bangladeshi women in Tower Hamlets to gain confidence, skills, and knowledge to increase numbers and rates of applications for jobs in the catering/hospitality sectors.

The ICAN project will recruit/train ten youth leaders, 19-25 years old, 8hrs per week, over 4 weeks to co-deliver a youth empowerment programme with young people, 11-15 years old for a 2hrs per week, over 12 weeks.

The project is designed to guide women in a way that will enable them to make informed choices for their futures, by facilitating a platform for further education, training, work experience and employment.

The ‘’It’s A Mag Ting’ project is a creative self-development programme designed to teach 29, 16–25-year-olds practical, transferrable creative skills (camera operating, digital content creation, editing, producing, presenting and marketing), interpersonal and employability skills (punctuality, presenting professionally, interview techniques and etiquette), so that they can progress into employment opportunities within the creative sector and/or re-enter educational pathways

This project will support 200 disadvantaged NEET young people (16-24) through a programme of workshops and workplace visits with their network of employers. Workshops will be around reaching their potential, achieving sustainable employment, exposure to different industries.

The project will recruit 20 BAME ex-offenders (age 18-25) to provide personalised support to each participant leading to sustainable progression opportunities including vocational training and employment. All participants will receive personalised mentoring and advocacy in an intensive and ongoing basis throughout their time on the project.

Band for Life is a music-based mental health project based at Bow Road Methodist Church. They run a weekly session involving music-making and singing. The group is a lively community of people who identify as having varying mental and physical health difficulties.

Our funding will enable Mudchute to subsidise environmental and farming workshops for local schools and out of school activities for local children, which are quite unique for an Inner City Area.

This project will deliver touch therapies from massage and acupuncture experts to people with severe mental illness from ethnic minority groups in a group format. It will help participants increase their social interactions and provide an opportunity to form new friendships with peers.

Our donation will contribute towards Shadwell Basin’s School Holiday Project which will run throughout the school holidays daily with a unique developed curriculum, ‘Pathways’. This enables all young people to engage in adventure activities at increasing levels of challenge and skill with National Accreditation. As part of the programme personal and social development through the underlying the charity’s values are taught e.g. humility, respect. Leadership, teamwork, communication and problem solving are also part of the Project. These are seen as vital developmental skills needed to pave the way into employment.

This programme will train local Mums to act as Peer Support Volunteers for other parents who are struggling during the “First 1001 Days” of their childs life. It will also provide equipment for the Peer Support Volunteers such as mobile phones, enabling further communication and support to young families. Ongoing professional supervision and support will be provided to individual Peer Support Volunteers through monthly Forums. Families will also be able to access relevant Toyhouse sessions, reducing isolation.

The Spitalfields City Farm Young Farmers Programme is for young people aged 12-17 in Tower Hamlets who predominantly experience marginalisation in society, participants will have the opportunity to build their confidence, gain new skills, make friends, build connections with nature, supporting physical and mental wellbeing.

Let Me Know (LMK) is an education charity working with young people to prevent domestic violence, relationship abuse and sexual assault. Our funding will contribute towards LMK’s delivery of ‘10 Signs’ domestic violence and relationship abuse prevention education workshops. Our grant will enable them to deliver nine workshops in Tower Hamlets teaching young people about healthy and unhealthy relationship behaviours, empowering young people to thrive in their relationships and preventing them from becoming victims of abuse.

Reach and Teach Project – A Sporting Chance Provision of a wide range of free weekly sports activities for young people, across two housing estates, Collingwood and Bancroft estate in Tower Hamlets. Using sports as a means for engagement to build self-confidence, develop skills and give residents the opportunity to live their best life with the aim to improve health and well-being through a range of quality sporting activities offering support, advice and guidance. The need arose through a targeted consultation period with these housing estates, overall the data revealed high demand for localised estate-based activities that were accessible and tailored to the needs and interests of young people. Our funding will go towards holiday activities, trips and mini competition days for young people to take part in.

Supporting Women’s Health and Wellbeing in Bethnal Green. Good Shepherd Mission (GSM) is a church, charity and mission, engaging in activities to support the community of Bethnal Green. GSM allows Zumba classes, a women’s support charity and Ukrainian ladies cooking together to use the building free of charge. Our funding will assist them to continue to offer this free provision to the numerous groups and help towards the costs of hosting these events including light and heat, cleaning and general overheads.

Get Active Together is a 42-week multi sports and physical activity programme held over three venues across Tower Hamlets. Over 200 young people aged 8-19, including those with a disability, will have regular access to structured fun physical activities. The programme will also raise awareness of health issues impacting the community and ways to address them.

The Sundial Sunbeams are a group aged between 18-65 with recurring mental health problems living in the community who meet once a week on Thursday at the Sundial Centre. This funding will offer a service user led day trip with a vision to enhance the wellbeing and quality of life for service users in need of support in the community.

The St. Matthias Community Centre in Poplar will be a Warm Hub open to local people in need on Sundays in January, February, March and April. A team of Volunteers have been helping the homeless and others in need since the beginning of the Covid pandemic. Many in Tower Hamlets have been affected badly by the isolation and loneliness suffered during the Lockdowns. Many have lost their social skills and have become even more vulnerable.

Tag fit & feisty aims to help over 50s and disabled people to be healthy and improve their wellbeing and diet through activities, exercise, coffee mornings and a meal in winter. The aim is to promote positive ageing in later life through advice and friendship in a safe warm place.

The Happy and Healthy Project supports people with long-term pain whom are four times more likely to experience depression and anxiety. This project utilises a proven approach: mindfulness, acupuncture and health-coaching, with peer-support social groups to reduce depression, anxiety and social isolation caused by long-term pain.