Over £115,000 in grants has been awarded to local community organisations who are inspiring young people, improving their employability skills and their well being as the final round of the 2019 Heathrow Community Trust Grants for Young People is announced. That makes the total awarded for this year, £350,596 – the largest annual amount we have ever awarded in our young people’s program.
The Trust, now in its 22nd year, awards approximately £1m a year in grants to local communities. It is supported by an annual donation of £725k from Heathrow and contributions from other companies operating at the airport such as John Lewis, Balfour Beatty and Fujitsu. In addition, the Fund also receives support from sponsored events which Heathrow colleagues take part in, including the London Marathon and the airport’s own charity race ‘The Midnight Marathon’. Noise fines levied on airlines when they break the noise regulations, also go towards this worthwhile cause.
The Heathrow Community Trust enables significant and positive improvement in quality of life for communities near the airport through education and community projects focused on enhancing young people’s skills, aspiration, resilience and employability, as well as improving community green spaces and projects bringing communities together. Financial support also extends to Heathrow colleagues who can apply for project funding for charities that they volunteer for though the HAPi – Heathrow Active People in the community – scheme.
Over the past 22 years, funding has been awarded to project work in Boroughs neighboring the airport – Ealing, Hillingdon, Hounslow, Slough, Runnymede, South Bucks, Windsor & Maidenhead, Richmond and Spelthorne. The first deadline for the 2020 Grants for Young People will be on Jan. 10 2020 and Round 1 in 2020 will focus on supporting projects which improve young people’s resilience and mental health.
The last round of projects to be awarded under Grants for Projects for Young People in 2019 are:
Stanwell Events – focus on improving wellbeing and resilience by running a youth cafe, young people’s furniture project, dinner club, community lunches, messy play, play group, arts and crafts club, holiday club and lunch clubs and Saturday games club to help reduce social isolation.
Protégé DNA Ltd – Help to teach digital and workplace skills to educationally excluded and socially isolated young people, to document the untold stories of local elderly migrant women who came to the UK in the 1960’s, culminating in the creation of an exhibition to showcase participants work.
IHEART – Offers early intervention preventative solutions to addressing resilience and mental health in schools. Helping young people make positive changes, especially those displaying challenging behavior and low motivation for learning and attainment.
Delight – Uses storytelling and dance to build a lasting connection with reading and public libraries in disadvantaged children, helping to raise aspirations, improving wellbeing and core skills.
National Literacy Trust “Inside Stories” – Aims to encourage reading in HMP Young Offenders Institute Feltham to improve academic achievement and emotional skills such as higher levels of empathy or self- esteem.
Hounslow Action for Youth – Delivers writing workshops, mentoring and talks for socially excluded young women to improve literacy, communication skills and civic participation. The work is shared within their communities to inspire other young people to improve attitudes and aspirations.
Denham United Ladies Football Club – equipping and preparing the dedicated all female club for the next football season.
ABC to read – Recruiting volunteers to act as reading mentors to advance the education and self-confidence of children, particularly by helping them overcome reading difficulties thereby promoting their general well being.
Heathrow Community Fund Director, Dr Rebecca Bowden said,“The financial support passed on by Heathrow and its partners has benefited hundreds of community members and has helped to make a real difference to the future of our young people. 2019 marked a fundraising record that saw more projects than ever before take-off and in the last year over 21,000 members of the local community benefited from projects that we funded. We are hugely proud to have been able to deliver this work in partnership with Heathrow Airport and I look forward to 2020 being another bumper year of new projects.”
Heathrow Chief Executive John Holland-Kaye, said,“We have been working with the Heathrow Community Fund for over 22 years and this year I am delighted that we have provided a record £350,596 to support local young people. Supporting young people by equipping them with the skills they need to succeed in the workplace is a key priority for Heathrow. We want to ensure that our future airport is built, operated and managed by local people, who have been provided with the tools to deliver a world class travelling experience for passengers across the world. We will continue to invest in our local community and help the Fund unlock more of these amazing projects.”
Delight CEO and Founder, Kathryn Mills said, “Delight in Libraries would simply not be happening if we had not been fortunate in securing funding from Heathrow Community Trust. The generous funding offered means we will reach 215 children across Spelthorne, bringing dance and storytelling to life and unlocking the magical world of books for children with the least access.”
