Three Essex Voluntary Groups receive The Queen’s Award for Voluntary Services
6th June 2022
Three voluntary groups from across the county who work in the community have been honoured with The Queen’s Award for Voluntary Services, the highest award a voluntary group can receive in the UK.
The Queen’s Award for Voluntary Services (QAVS) aims to recognise outstanding work by volunteer groups to benefit local communities. It was created in 2002 to celebrate The Queen’s Golden Jubilee. Recipients are announced each year on 2nd June, the anniversary of The Queen’s Coronation.
Representatives of the groups receive the QAVS Award Crystal and a QAVS Certificate signed by Her Majesty the Queen from Her Majesty’s representative in the County, the Lord Lieutenant at a local ceremony. Two volunteers from the winning groups are invited to attend a garden party at Buckingham Palace in the summer of this year, along with other recipients of this award.
The three winning groups from Essex are:
- Brighter Opportunities for Special People (BOSP), Pitsea, Basildon – Has been in existence for over 30 years. Its volunteers support families who have children or young people with complex disabilities or life limiting conditions. The group provide a wide range of fun social activities and support services for 113 young people and over 250 parents, carers and siblings who receive vital respite.
- Brentwood Imperial Youth Band – Was formed over 30 years ago and is run entirely by volunteers who give over 11,000 hours a year to support young musicians who perform in the UK and overseas. The high standard of musicianship and performance excellence is truly remarkable and rates the band as one of the finest in the world.
- The Listening Post CIC, Basildon – Opened in 2016 to help meet a growing demand for mental health support. It provides one to one counselling services and unlike other counselling services, there is no waiting list, no limit to the number of sessions a client can have, and no issue that cannot be covered. Reduced rate sessions are offered based on disposable income, many are given free of charge, and nobody is turned away.
The three groups from Essex are amongst 244 charities, social enterprises, and volunteer-led groups to receive the prestigious award this year across the UK. The number of nominations remains high year on year showing that the voluntary sector is thriving and full of innovative ideas to make life better for those around them.
This award is given to volunteer groups across the UK to recognise exceptional service within their communities. The recipients of the award are announced each year on 2 June – the anniversary of the Queen’s Coronation. The QAVS is considered as the MBE for voluntary groups.
The three Essex winners will receive the prestigious Award from Mrs Jennifer Tolhurst, Lord Lieutenant of Essex, later this year at presentation events organised to bring together the volunteers, those who receive the service, and other connected to the winning group.
Mrs Jennifer Tolhurst, Lord Lieutenant of Essex said: “The announcement of three winners of the prestigious Queen’s Award for Voluntary Services, the highest national award for voluntary groups, across Essex is a wonderful tribute to the outstanding work of the voluntary sector. The number of awards won across Essex speaks volumes for the excellence of volunteering in our county and the increasing importance of the work of volunteers for community wellbeing. I am delighted that three extremely deserving groups, who are providing a wide range of services to our communities have been honoured by Her Majesty the Queen. I look forward to presenting the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Services to each of the groups over the coming months, and to celebrate their success with their volunteers and many who receive their excellent service.
“I would also like to encourage all who know of outstanding voluntary groups doing outstanding work in their communities to go on to the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Services website and nominate those groups for this wonderful award”.
Jodie Connelly, Chief Executive Officer of BOSP, said: “We feel really humbled and honoured to receive this award. BOSP is a small charity, aiming to prevent crisis in local families and enable children with disabilities to have the best time. Without the support of the community, this wouldn’t be possible. I feel the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Services recognises this. To me it’s a huge official ‘thank you’ to all our volunteers and supporters in recognition of their hard work and commitment to BOSP”.
Johnpaul Wyndom, Musical Director of the Brentwood Youth Band, said: “Our team of volunteers commit hours upon hours of support, in a marvellous variation of forms, to make the band a possibility for our beneficiaries. They all do so with no reward and often with little recognition. To receive a QAVS award, especially in the Platinum Jubilee year, reminds us of the invaluable contribution made by our wonderful team, their dedicated service and what is possible when empowered by the unrelenting energy of volunteers”
Alison Cunningham, Founder and Director of The Listening Post CIC, said: “The Listening Post CIC is honoured to be awarded the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Services. The award highlights the considerable achievements of our volunteers through very difficult and challenging times. It recognises the dedication, commitment, and passion of our volunteers who believe that supporting people with their mental health can and does make fundamental and long-lasting changes to the lives of those they support”.
East of England Co-op offers £100K to local community groups in Essex
30th May 2022
Local community groups and charities in Essex are being encouraged to apply for a share of £100,000 on offer from the East of England Co-op.
Grants of between £1,000 and £5,000 from the ‘East of England Co-op’s Community Cares Fund’ are available to local voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations that deliver projects supporting community action, food justice or mental health and wellbeing.
The fund, which opened for applications on Monday 30 May, was launched by the retailer in 2020 to support groups that create services or activities which have a positive impact in their local community. To date, the East of England Co-op has so far given away £67,000 across Essex, supporting more than 50,000 people.
Organisations in the county which have previously benefitted from the Co-op’s Community Cares Fund include the Dance Network Association CIC for a social dance project aimed at older adults living with dementia and Parkinson’s disease; and the Colchester & Tendring Youth Enquiry Service to support the counselling of young people whose mental health has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Commenting on the launch of the fund, East of England Co-op Community Development Manager, Kat Reading, said: “As a co-operative we’re committed to supporting our local communities and helping them to thrive. Our previous funding rounds have been extremely popular so we know times are incredibly challenging at the moment for community groups and the local people they support, but it is these small organisations that have the biggest impact.
“Thanks to the generous support of our members, who have kindly donated their dividend points along with cash donations, we’re able to support even more fantastic projects across the region.”
The East of England Co-op’s Community Cares Fund is delivered in partnership with the Essex Community Foundation.
What can be supported:
Funding applications should address at least one of these key areas:
- Community action– including the development of physical and virtual spaces and services that bring communities together
- Mental health and wellbeing
- Food justice for all– including access to, and sharing knowledge about good quality, nutritious food.
This fund is to support organisations in Colchester, Braintree, Maldon, Tendring. Near to their shops: Store finder – East of England Co-op
How to apply:
Due to the high level of applications we have receive, the deadline for this funding programme is now 5pm on on Tuesday 21 June. Grant decisions will be made in August 2022.
To check your eligibility and for the application form, click here.
If you have any questions or would like to discuss your work in advance of applying, please call the ECF grants team on 01245 356018.
New Report – Listening to our communities
24th May 2022
Andy Payne Worpole, Head of Programmes at ECF, highlights some of the key findings from our Community Listening Project that will help us to further develop our grantmaking and ensure that our funding is accessible:
“We commissioned this report to uncover the challenges faced by the local voluntary sector post-pandemic, better understand their experiences, and find out how we can support their work to help local communities thrive.
“The researcher interviewed organisations of different sizes and a wide range of beneficiaries including, children and young people, older people, refugees and asylum seekers, people living with disability and those experiencing homelessness.
“It was encouraging to know that we are responding to our communities in some of the ways that they need us to eg. the report emphasises the importance for us to continue championing smaller grassroots groups that may find it difficult to access alternative funding sources. Currently two out of five groups we support have an annual income of less than £50,000 and we actively try to engage with these new and smaller groups.
“The report also highlighted organisations’ need for multi-year funding and for us to increase the amount we award in this way. In addition, the importance of providing support for core running costs was important to them. Currently, a third of all our grants support staff salaries and other organisational core costs.
“The need for our grant funding to be accessible was also raised. We continually try to improve our processes and have already simplified our application and monitoring forms to help groups that are looking for funding. We also now offer bookable time slots so that anyone can meet with us to discuss a potential funding application and ask questions.
“We know that groups face a challenging time ahead and access to funding will always be an issue, however the report also highlighted other issues, including:
- The need to up-skill the voluntary sector on areas such as governance, leadership, and finance
- Increasing support for marginalised groups, ensuring equity, diversity and inclusion
- Influencing wider change and actively using local evidence to champion community groups
- Supporting collaboration by bringing groups together to network
“We will continue to listen and keep you informed of any new opportunities to get involved in community listening events. The report is easy to navigate, and we hope you enjoy reading it. If you would like to share your thoughts, please email me via Andypw@essexcf.org.uk.
“I would also like to thank all the community groups and organisations that took part in this research. Your contributions are invaluable.”
Boost for Essex-based causes as Provide Community more than triples its community grants
Essex-based social enterprise, Provide Community, has announced the release of its biggest round of funding to date, with 27 local charities and community groups awarded grants totalling £374,646.
The successful funding applicants include homeless charities CHESS in Chelmsford (pictured) and Beacon House in Colchester, Essex Blind Charity, Farleigh Hospice caring for terminally ill patients in mid Essex, Headway Essex supporting individuals with an acquired brain injury, CARA (Centre for Action on Rape and Abuse) and the Laughter Specialists, providing entertainment to severely ill children.
Many have been awarded grants of over £15,000 each, with some reaching as much as £20,000.
As a Community Interest Company (CIC) responsible for the delivery of health and social care services across Essex and East Anglia and beyond, Provide Community reinvests its profits to benefit the communities it serves.
“Our strategic grants enable us to extend our support beyond the services we deliver.”
Each year, Provide Community works in partnership with Essex Community Foundation (ECF) to shortlist charities and groups that have applied for funding, before turning to its members to vote for their preferred recipients and decide on how its surpluses should be distributed.
Last year, a total of £103,012 was awarded to 16 charities through this initiative. With a goal to increase this year-on-year, Provide Community has more than trebled its community funding in 2022, taking the total amount of grant and match funding to more than £3.5 million in the last 10 years.
Mark Heasman, Group Chief Executive of Provide Community, explained how investing in local communities is an important part of the company’s ethos:
“This year’s funding provision is a fantastic achievement for the business, supporting our vision to transform lives through care, innovation and compassion.
“Everyone at Provide makes a difference to the communities within which we operate and crucially has a say in how we do this. We all care about making a long-lasting impact on those we work for and our strategic grants enable us to extend our support beyond the services we deliver.”
The full list of charities that received funding along with the amount awarded can be found on Provide Community’s website via www.provide.org.uk/latest-news.
An evening at Layer Marney Tower
16th May 2022
We brought together over 100 of our fundholders and supporters at Layer Marney Tower to share an update of our work and discuss local issues that communities are facing across Essex.
It was great to be back together again, and we are so grateful to Nick and Sheila Charrington for letting us use their beautiful venue.
During the event, we highlighted two organisations where “caring” is at the heart of everything they do. They shared the challenges they face, the joy they bring to their beneficiaries and touched on how the financial support from ECF has helped to further their work. These were:
Abberton Rural Training (ART)
ART provides education and training in a wide range of Land Based Studies, including Horticulture, Woodlands, Conservation and Construction.
Getting outdoors to learn something new boosts the mental health of their beneficiaries and gives them practical skills to help them find employment. Their beneficiaries include those suffering with mental ill-health, injured service personnel and people with special educational needs. They also help people to write CVs, practice interview skills and find jobs to apply to.
We supported ART with a grant of £35,200 to help cover the running costs of their work in the Braintree District over the next two years, helping people who are unemployed or having mental health problems.
Candles – North Essex Down Syndrome Support Group (pictured)
Parents who have a child with Down Syndrome came together to set up this community group, which provides valuable support and activities for families in the same situation to enjoy together.
Sessions include dance classes, football, cycling clubs and specialist sessions such as Makaton & Speech Language Classes to improve communication. Having started in Colchester, the group has grown and now provides support to families in and around Tendring, Maldon, Braintree and Babergh.
We awarded Candles a grant of £3,841to support their running costs and expand their offering for local families.
Why is giving locally so important?
Supporting the local community is a big part of Rickard Luckin’s history. Over a decade ago, the chartered accountants and tax advisers took steps to embed this value into its ethos, ensuring it is part of the business’s future. Gayner Smith, Director at Rickard Luckin, explains how the team did it:
“In 2009, we started working with Essex Community Foundation (ECF) and set up the ‘Rickard Luckin Community Fund’. For those new to the concept,
ECF is an independent charitable trust based in Chelmsford that helps people, companies and public agencies give back to their local community effectively and efficiently.
“It just made perfect sense to us. We liked having our own corporate-named charity through which we could give support to some of the lesser-known local voluntary groups working in areas where our offices are based. Some of them we didn’t even know existed! We wanted colleagues to be involved in deciding who we should support. But we didn’t necessarily know which local organisations would benefit most from our help, and we also needed some assistance in assessing requests.”
Since setting up the Rickard Luckin Community Fund, the company, which has offices in Basildon, Chelmsford and Southend, has given away over
£21,000 in grants to support a wide range of local charities and groups. These include Southend Foodbank, City of Chelmsford Mencap and Autism
and Nature. In addition, the team regularly organises events and has already raised over £53,000 in an endowed fund that secures their support for the local community forever.
Gaynor continued, “It is important to us that our corporate giving remains in Essex as it is where most of our team and many of our clients live, so we want to reinvest back into local communities. We also offer payroll giving, which is a great way for our staff to donate to our Fund (and a method that benefits from tax relief).
“Working with ECF also allows us to help clients who want to discuss how best they can give to charity during their lifetime, or as part of their estate planning and writing their will. We can advise on the various giving options and available tax incentives, but if they want to know more, we are pleased to suggest they speak with ECF as this is their area of expertise. It’s a great partnership that benefits us all.”
It is often the larger, national charities that receive donations. But local charities make up a large proportion of the charity sector and often operate on tiny budgets; 85% of registered charities in the UK have an annual income of less than £100,000 and hundreds more community groups operate informally. By supporting deserving causes closer to home, our people can see what a difference their support makes. Giving to national charities is certainly worthwhile, but nothing beats championing your local community.
To discuss how you can support local charities, call Perry Norton, Head of Development at ECF, on 01245 355947 or email perry@essexcf.org.uk
Republished from Essex Director Magazine.