Co-design and Participatory Grant Making model distributes £800,000 in Hackney and Newham
With generous support from City Bridge Foundation, the Smallwood Trust is pleased to award £800,000 through the Local Resilience Fund to 17 organisations working with women furthest from mainstream support in Hackney and Newham. This funding reflects Smallwood’s commitment to addressing gendered poverty and promoting financial resilience, especially among marginalised women.
The fund was co-designed with 13 community partners already providing services to women furthest from mainstream support: specifically those from a refugee, migrant and asylum-seeking background. In Hackney the priorities were access to quality temporary housing for single homeless women and mental health and in Newham access to advice and routes out of destitution.
This approach is part of Smallwood’s ongoing efforts to shift and share power in funding design and delivery, ensuring that the organisations have the tools and resources needed to create sustainable impact. Some of the recommendations that came out of the fund were to simplify the application process and extend the period of unrestricted grant funding as well as the creation of a resourced support network, with an annual review tailored to each organisation.
In another first for Smallwood, the Board of Trustees devolved grant making authority with over half of the available funding distributed through 2 Participatory Grant Making Panels, chaired by community partners. These panels were responsible for awarding funding to 11 organisations under the Uplift Fund, a smaller grants programme providing unrestricted funding. The remaining funds have been awarded to six strategic consortium partners, who will take a lead role in facilitating the development of networks and addressing key themes identified during the co-design process.
The projects funded by this initiative span a wide range of critical services for women. These range from exploring the creation of alternative housing models for single homeless women, resourcing volunteering schemes which will capacity build individuals and sustain the life-blood of mutual aid, to extending the hours of advice workers and funding new positions to help access services for migrant women facing language and other barriers.
The funded partners are:
Community Partners in Hackney
Micro Rainbow
Hackney Doorways
Filipino Domestic Workers Association
Middle Eastern Women & Society Organisation
Project 17
Hawa Trust
Akwaaba
Hackney Migrant Centre
Community Partners in Newham
Alternatives Trust East London
Families & Community Support Services
Shpresa
Skills Match
Heal Together
Gabriela Safehaven South East and East Asian Women’s Association
Magpie Project
Newham Community Project
Carpenter’s Café
By supporting these amazing organisations, Smallwood Trust is helping them to address the racial and social justice challenges that often accompany gendered poverty. Many of the small organisations funded work directly with asylum seekers, refugees, and migrant women, providing essential services where there is no state support and where fundraising is a challenge in the current climate. This funding and the support of the networks in each area aims to be a lifeline, empowering women and their communities to build resilience and create lasting change.
