During the first half of this financial year, seven community projects and two customers have been gifted grants totalling over £16,000 by Cottsway Housing.
Cottsway is West Oxfordshire’s largest affordable housing provider, and the grants have been given from its Community Fund. This year £30,000 has been made available to support the work people, charities and voluntary groups do in local communities.
The latest projects to receive grants include:
- Carterton Community College: £863 towards running their summer holiday club for those aged 5–14 who were eligible for free school meals, in care or refugees in Carterton and the surrounding area. The practical yet fun activities helped the children to improve communication and develop problem solving skills, teamwork and resilience.
- Changing Life: £2,500 to support this community interest company’s ‘Acceptance + Belief + Choice = Change’ programme which helps women who are unemployed or on a low income and have experienced trauma to heal and rebuild their lives through workshops and one-on-one mentoring.
- Home-Start Oxford: £2,500 to support their wellbeing parent and toddler groups in Witney, connecting parents and children through free, shared weekly activities in a warm, safe place. These groups help to reduce loneliness and isolation, build confidence and offer children the chance to interact with their peers, improve communication skills and become more active learners.
- Oxfordshire Play Association (OPA): £2,500 to help provide a series of play and activity days for children and their families at multiple venues across West Oxfordshire held over the summer. These were free to attend and also provided information on services and activities available in the local and wider area.
- The Northmoor Community Trust: £2,500 towards regenerating the former Northmoor play area and the land behind the village hall into somewhere for the whole community to gather with new play equipment, high benches for those with mobility issues and an area for wildlife and nature.
- Thomas Gifford Trust: £2,345 to help fund a dedicated youth worker to organise a weekly youth club in Charlbury, raise awareness of the local clubs and activities available and act as a safe and trusted individual so the young people of the town aged 11-16 can have their voices heard.
- Yellow Submarine: £2,420 to support their Wednesday Night Club based at their café at the Windrush Leisure Centre, Witney. This club provides experiences and opportunities for around 65 adults with learning difficulties to develop independent living skills and social skills in a safe and supportive environment.
The Community Fund is also available to support Cottsway customers who wish to learn new skills and increase job prospects. Grants of up to £250 are available to help pay for training and coaching courses, qualifications and learning support materials.
So far two customers have benefitted from this support this year, helping them to further their career prospects.
Cynthia, 26, who lives in a Cottsway home in West Oxfordshire, has completed a professional course in Change Management.
She received £208 towards the cost of this course and said: “Change management is something I was interested in learning more about, and with project management and change management becoming a more important part in business today, I wanted to complete this course to improve my employability.
“I’m very grateful for Cottsway’s support as completing this course has enabled me to widen my knowledge base in this area and will hopefully open up more career opportunities for me in the future.”
The other customer received a £235 grant towards the cost of a new laptop to help him to complete his university studies.
Cottsway customers are invited to join a customer-only Facebook group – search Communities@Cottsway – where they can vote on which Community fund applications they would like to support and the amount of funding to be awarded.
Vicki Paxford, Communities Manager at Cottsway, said: “We’re delighted that we can continue to make a real difference to the communities where we work and to our customers’ futures.
“We still have funding available for this year so I’d encourage anyone who could benefit to get in touch.”
Image credit: fizkes/Shutterstock
Read next: Local community helps design public art piece for affordable living scheme
Are you a social housing professional? Sign up for a FREE MEMBERSHIP to upload news stories, post job vacancies, and connect with colleagues on our secure social feed.
