Guide Small Community Grants

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9. Grants given out so far

This fund is currently closed to new applications while we re-consider our corporate grants and funding process. We have a grants mailing list which will send out an email notification when it has reopened to new applications. To be added to our grants mailing list, please contact us at engagement@eastdevon.gov.uk.

We have already given out the following grants: 

  1. Additional Needs Sports Group, based in Honiton, will receive £500 to be able to start providing dance sessions to children with disabilities and / or additional needs. These will get the children moving and socialising, and gives their families an opportunity to get support from others having the same experiences.
  2. Chardstock Eco Group will receive £500 towards their £850 project. They will be purchasing a day of training from Westcountry Rivers Trust for their volunteer river water testers. River water quality monitoring would not happen without these volunteers - and fine quality, healthy rivers are a critical component of protecting and enhancing the natural environment. They will also offer up places to the newly-formed water testing teams in Stockland, Membury, the Lower Otter and Broadhembury. The training will cover: why it is important to carry out citizen science on the river; what can they learn from it; what should they do if they see problems; how do they identify problems with the river; and a check on correct testing and recording of results.
  3. Living Memories will receive £300. They will use this money to help buy a projector for their Tea and Memories sessions that can be used both indoors and outdoors, which will be used to show some of the 2,500 archive films and newsreels from the 20th Century that Living Memories have access to. Once attendees have seen the footage they will get to reminisce for an hour or more over tea and biscuits, sitting around the table at a Tea and Memories session they will learn about each others lives, from childhood onwards. This will help reduce the isolation of older people, particularly those with dementia.
  4. Cranbrook Community Festival will receive £440. They’ll use this money to help them put on this year’s free Cranbrook Festival in June 2022. Community events play such an important part in the town’s spirit and really bring the community together. As they couldn’t do much community fundraising through the Coronavirus pandemic they were finding it difficult to get the money together to make sure the event could go ahead, so we will be paying for the headline act.
  5. Pippins Community Centre in Axminster will receive £500, which will pay for the setting up of a larder containing store cupboard ingredients such as dried herbs and flour, which can then be used for free by the local community. Pippins already has a community fridge, which is stocked using fresh food waste from supermarkets, and people can go and help themselves to the produce for free. They noticed that more and more people were coming in and excitedly talking about cooking from scratch for themselves at home when they perhaps hadn’t really done it before. They noticed people’s confidence starting to increase, particularly in those attending The Axminster Drug and Alcohol Recovery sessions, and wanted to continue to empower people to have the skills to cook healthy food for themselves. The stock of store cupboard ingredients will allow people on a tight budget to cook a much wider variety of recipes.  
  6. The Friends of Millwater School PTFA near East Budleigh will receive £500. Millwater School educates 115 children with complex and profound disabilities. Their pupils usually learn best when outdoors and they take great pride in planting and growing produce. They will use the money to buy some items for their horticulture project including waterproof outdoor storage containers, a small greenhouse, seeds, and a solar-power pack to provide lighting for their outdoor learning shed.
  7. Axminster Guildhall will receive £460, which will pay for turning part of their old bar into a tea and coffee area for people that hire the hall, which will allow them to hire it out to more local bookers. This will leave the kitchen area free for the use of others, including Nourish Axminster, who use the kitchen regularly to prepare nutritious meals for local people and families in food poverty.
  8. Nourish Axminster are being given £500, which will help them provide free lunches for vulnerable people in their community. The lunches will support people who are experiencing isolation and those who are not able to fed themselves nutritionally balanced meals.
  9. Woodbury Lawn Tennis Club will receive £400 to help them purchase a gazebo and tables so they, visitors and visiting teams can meet outdoors. This will improve the mental health of people attending, who may still be nervous to use the ageing hut due to the risks of catching Coronavirus, whilst still encouraging them to socialise.
  10. Dream-A-Way will receive £500 towards new static caravan equipment and bedding. They offer very low cost static caravan holidays to people with disabilities, terminally ill people, people with cancer and people with other life limiting conditions who would otherwise not be able to afford to get away. Where this would normally cost £2,000+ during school holidays the charity charges about £50-£150. Over 75% of the beneficiaries live within East Devon. It could be the person's / family's first or last ever holiday. When they opened the caravans up again after the winter break a lot of equipment and bedding needed replacing either for hygiene reasons or because they were worn out.  
  11. Drakes C of E Primary School PTFA in East Budleigh have been successful with their application to our Small Community Grants scheme, we’re giving them £500. They’ll use this money to buy a shed, which they will turn into a sensory area / reading shed. This will be a specific quiet area for pupils to focus on quiet time and improve the children’s mental health. It will be used long term to promote and ensure the mental health of pupils for years to come.
  12. Seachange will receive £500 towards their total project costs of £1,000. They will use this to help pay for the Littleham Health and Wellbeing Community Event. This event is being held as a direct result of increasing health inequalities in this area of Exmouth as identified by the local GP practices. The event will showcase different activities and opportunities that the local community may wish to get involved in such as Back to Netball, walking rugby and other health and wellbeing activities. 
  13. Puffins at Beer Pre-School will receive £500 towards their £750 project. They will use this to to create a new tranquil re-wilding & wellbeing space within the pre-school's existing garden. The new space will be a quiet haven where the children can enjoy the natural environment, spot nature, learn about our beautiful environment, enjoy imaginative play and read books, plus many other activities. Access to green space is extremely important to the mental wellbeing, overall health and cognitive development of children.
  14. Sid Valley Biodiversity Group have been granted £333.52 for their project. They will purchase scientific equipment to carry out a tree survey, hedgerow survey, herbaceous survey, and a monthly water quality survey of River Sid and tributaries. The aim of this is to improve biodiversity. It will also inform, educate and encourage local people to appreciate a greener East Devon.
  15. Friends of Higher Woolbrook Meadow in Sidford have been granted £450. They’ll use this money to buy equipment such as a hedge trimmer, a wheelbarrow and hand tools to help them look after a hedgerow and several trees. They planted these in the open space as part of the Queens Green Canopy 2022 scheme.  
  16. Honiton Community Use Building (CUB) are receiving £500 towards their £1,000 project. The groups already meeting at Honiton’s Community Use Building include Honiton Youth Club, Honiton Parent  and Toddler group, The 729 Club, ROC creative, Open Arms East Devon, Wood Querkery, Roc education and Honiton Shedders. Honiton CUB will spend the money on a very neglected large side garden at the community building that many of the groups have shown an interest in using for their members. They’ll put in some raised beds at wheel chair height, and seating, plus some hand tools. Many will find a garden area very therapeutic which in turn will help their mental health and general wellbeing. It will also give a chance for them to grow their own vegetables and fruit.
  17. Lady Mary Courtenay's Goosefield Millennium Green in Exton has been given £450. They will use this to buy picnic tables and benches to put into the open space they were gifted in 2020. Over the Coronavirus pandemic the open space has ben used by many local people as a safe space to meet friends and family outdoors. 
  18. Sidmouth Voluntary Services has been given £300. This will enable them to buy arts and crafts activities, games and puzzles for elderly people to use at the Sidmouth Voluntary Services cafe on a Friday morning. These new activities will encourage social interaction, reduce isolation and improve their physical and mental wellbeing.
  19. RV One have been given £500. RV One provides free positive mental health experiences within the local community through physical and adventure activities. They will use this to help them run an event to publicise their new base at Warren View in Exmouth, which will allow them to help even more local residents. 
  20. Honiton Town Football and Sports Association have been given £500. They are a registered charity that incorporates Honiton Town Youth Football Club, which provides youth football services for the children of Honiton and surrounding areas between the ages of 5 and 18. They are looking for an alternative site that would be a sustainable, long term larger site with toilets, parking and welfare facilities. They're investigating a potential site and needed funds in order to be able to do it. 
  21. LittEL AngELs from Cranbrook have been given £500. They will use this to set up a bi-weekly weekend group where dads (and some mums) and their children age 0-12 can meet, socialise and undertake activities. 
  22. The Community Waffle House CIC based in Axminster have been given £500. Their furniture is currently falling apart, so they will use this grant to replace it. Using their community links they will source good quality second hand or re-purposed furniture. The Community Waffle House is a not for profit community space that hosts groups such as mental health support groups and homelessness support, and also does outreach work within the local community. 
  23. Sidmouth Coastal Communities Hub has received £500 towards running the festival Sidmouth Sea Fest in 2022.  This free community festival provides a platform for local groups and organisations to show case their work, provide activities, promote Sidmouth’s fishing heritage, responsible tourism, environmental awareness and physical and wellbeing activities. This includes art workshops, local groups: environmental, mental health and wellbeing and
    physical activity based, heritage skills such as withy pot making and other crafts, author talks, community entertainment, live music and a local choir.
  24. Clyst Hydon Swimming Pool has been given £500 towards their £2,000 project to put in a defibrillator in Clyst Hydon near the swimming pool. This will be available for everyone to use and will give people suffering a heart attack an extra chance of survival. 
  25. Esteem Team CIC, based in Exmouth, have received £500 to provide mentoring sessions to vulnerable children and young people from the Littleham area during the summer holidays. Littleham is an area of deprivation and many children from the area find social isolation challenging during the summer holidays or they engage in risky behaviours due to lack of opportunities or their parent/carers are working.
  26. Hawkchurch Primary School PTFA have been given £500 towards a covered outdoor seating area for their spiritual area / sensory garden. This will allow the pupils to sit out there in all weathers, which will increase children's mental health. They are going to see if they can get this made by a local Men's Shed group, which are voluntary groups that provide a workshop space with tools and materials for people to work together on projects - this improves their mental health / social isolation. 
  27. Eager Beavers - Tipton St John will receive £500 to help create a community garden / allotment. They will use this to grow free, organic fruit and vegetables for local residents. This will supply food for people and reduce its carbon footprint, allow volunteers to work together outdoors to look after the garden / allotment and will also provide a much needed resource for wildlife and pollinators. 
  28. The Not In My Back Yard Community Interest Company have been given £500 towards helping them publicise their service using social media and physical marketing signs. They are a not for profit organisation working with a collection of 30 local, organic, low waste, ethical food producers. Fresh, healthy, local produce can be ordered by customers and is delivered to collection points, and delivered to people's homes when they cannot get to the collection points.  
  29. Devon Communities Together received £500 towards helping them run two events, one online and one in person, to help East Devon's voluntary and community groups think about how to diversify their income and train them in how to complete grants applications. 
  30. Seaton Primary School Parent Teacher Association received £500 towards to purchasing new outdoor and forest school resources to further improve the current (basic) equipment. Including new tarpaulins and shelters, plants, woodscrews and hammocks. The new Forest School resources will significantly
    enhance the health and wellbeing of the 300+ pupils at Seaton Primary School.
  31. Cranbrook Education Campus received £500 towards painting floor designs on their school playground. They had no climbing frame, trail or paintings in the play ground and it was very bare. It will encourage the children to play outdoors and exercise more. Outdoor play allows physical, social, emotional, imaginative and cognitive development. Exercise improves health and well-being while the safe environment encourages independence. 
  32. Beer Men's Shed received £500 to help them equip their new shed with chairs, benches, tools and other essential items to enable them to get it up
    and running. They aim to provide a safe, friendly place where men can come to chat and work with other like minded men. The concept of having a local branch of the National Men's Shed organisation has proven to be very important to their community of mainly retired and elderly men, especially during the last few years of the pandemic. 
  33. Exmouth Lawn Tennis Club has received £400 towards installing a defibrillator on the outside wall of their clubhouse. This will be accessible to their members, most of whom are over the age of 60, and also the wider community.
  34. Exmouth Gig Club has received £400 to allow them to professionally overhaul a set of their oars. As well as physical health benefits, members of the club of all ages experience significant mental health benefits to taking part.