It’s a great time of year to support charities that do important work in our communities. This year, we’ve donated £3,430 each to seven different organisations, every one with its own unique mission.
Project MAMA
Bristol-based charity Project MAMA provides crucial support to pregnant refugees, asylum-seekers, displaced women, and survivors of modern slavery and human trafficking.
People in these demographics often cannot access vital parts of the NHS or other services they may need, and can come up against language barriers and social isolation. Project MAMA seeks to address these problems through its network of midwives, doulas, activists and birth companions, who come together to offer all-important advice, support, and skills for women and their children.
Read Project MAMA’s full story here.
Hope for Food
Bournemouth charity Hope For Food is an entirely volunteer-run organisation, founded by Claire Matthews in 2012. Claire wanted to ensure that people in the local community could access basic essentials on a daily basis – and this work has only grown in importance with the current cost of living crisis.
The charity began as a soup kitchen running from a car park, but with the support of St Andrew’s Church in 2014, Hope for Food was able to provide a safe indoor space to feed around 60 disadvantaged people within the community each Thursday and Sunday evening.
Find out more about Hope for Food.
National Association of Boys and Girls Clubs (NABGC)
The NABGC runs activities, member clubs, and county organisations for young people. The NABGC ensures that all their activities are affordable and fun, and they offer safe places for young people to learn new skills, and meet new people.
Their core areas of work revolve around building sports and activity programmes, residential trips, and challenges for everyone to take part in. By supporting and training their volunteers, they encourage links between organisations and clubs at a local and national level.
Learn more about the NABGC, their goals, and their Youth Work Manifesto here.
Give a Book
Set up in 2011 by Victoria Gray in memory of playwright Simon Gray, Give a Book is a charity dedicated to promoting books and the pleasure of reading in the hardest places.
Give a Book works with a number of partner organisations, and runs regular reading groups in prisons, school breakfast clubs, and pupil referral units to have a positive impact on educational achievement, literacy, and confidence in all who participate. In 2020 alone, Give a Book sent out 21,200 books, and worked with 78 prisons and 27 schools – despite the difficulties presented by the COVID lockdowns!
If you’re interested in Give a Book, you can read more about them here.
Family Holiday Charity
Family Holiday Charity helps families get away for a holiday together. From young carers to those facing a bereavement or social isolation, the charity aims to give families a space to reconnect, rest, and enjoy activities together, building their relationships and allowing them some time away from their daily commitments and responsibilities.
Their results speak for themselves: the holidays have a long-term impact on the families who benefit from them, with 90% reporting that they got on better and spent more time together after they returned home.
If you’d like to hear more about the Family Holiday Charity, take a look at their website.
Refuweegee
Glasgow-based charity Refuweegee was set up in 2015 by founder Selina Hales, with the goal of welcoming forcibly displaced people to the city. The charity has been able to provide over 10,000 welcome and emergency support packs to those in need to date!
The charity aims to bring the Glaswegian community together in a united effort to support refugees arriving in the city, through running events, hosting volunteering opportunities, and distributing welcome packs. As Refuweegee put it, “our aim is to enable the existing community in extending the friendly welcome that Glasgow is world-renowned for”.
Find out more about Refuweegee.
St George’s Crypt
A long-standing Leeds-based charity, St George’s Crypt was founded in 1930 to support people in Leeds who are homeless, vulnerable, or suffering from addiction. Alongside providing 24/7 emergency accommodation for those in need, the Crypt has created a range of different social enterprises designed to give vulnerable people the opportunity to learn new skills.
The catering and food arm of the charity offers training and engagement for offenders, service users, and anyone who might have experienced difficulty in moving their lives forward. In the last year alone, the Crypt has provided 12,000 hot showers, 65,700 meals, and 10,920 beds for the night! Their work also helps their users access vital healthcare and well-being support from the NHS and other partner organisations.
Hear more about the brilliant work being done at St George’s Crypt here.