Crisis Response: Smallwood increases funding and awards three new grants
As a response to the Covid-19 crisis, we are pleased to announce that the Smallwood Trust board has significantly increased our funding for the year and has awarded three new grants.
Despite the Trust’s own endowments and potential income being reduced, the board have decided to release some of the Trust’s assets in order to increase our grant spend from £1.3m (last year) to more than £2m so that we can reach even more financially vulnerable women.
The first three organisations to benefit from this funding will target groups of women that have been put at high risk. They are:
1) Support and Mentoring Enabling Entrepreneurship (SAMEE) are based in Boscombe and support women to become entrepreneurs. Many of their clients have disabilities and/or are single mums. They have held two previous project grants from us and will receive funding of £75k over three years.
2) Tenbury No Interest Loans Scheme (NILS) work in rural communities in Worcestershire, Herefordshire and Shropshire and provide no interest loans to help overcome financial barriers and reduce hardship. They have piloted providing grants alongside their loans scheme to ensure that they can reach the most marginalised and isolated women. They will receive £45K over three years.
3) Young Women’s Trust (YWT) have launched an emergency grants scheme for young women aged 18-30 to support them to overcome immediate hardship during the coronavirus. Young women are one of the groups most at risk of further poverty during Covid-19 and Smallwood have funded £25k towards this.
Paul Carbury, Chief Executive of the Smallwood Trust said “whilst we are working hard to identify new ways to help more women, we are also committed to supporting the frontline organisations that have already assisted financially vulnerable women both before and during this crisis.”
Another round of funding will be announced later this month. Meanwhile, more information on our response to the pandemic will be released in due course.
