WomenZone would like to congratulate Sharena Lee Satti for her book launch Shhhhhhhh. We are already amazed and cannot wait to get our hands on one. Sharena has been part of WomenZone through multiple projects and has always been an honour to work with.
For Sharena’s work, please visit www.sharenaleesatti.com
We’re pleased to have received funding from The National Lottery Community Fund distributed by the Smallwood Trust, which has helped us sustain emergency welfare to support women experiencing poverty.
We thank the National Lottery players for making this possible.
The Smallwood Trust has awarded £1.75 million in new grants across England through Round 1 of the Women’s Urgent Support Fund. The Fund is supported by The National Lottery Community Fund, the largest community funder in the UK, to respond to the cost-of-living crisis.
Thanks to National Lottery players, 23 organisations will receive funding over three years that will safeguard frontline staff salaries, provide essential items for women at most risk of poverty and cover increased running costs. To meet high demand on the Fund, an additional 8 organisations were awarded a grant through Smallwood’s own funds.
We’re pleased to share that a total of 31 grants have been awarded.
You can learn more about the Women’s Urgent Support Fund Round 1 here.
Who has been funded?
Examples of organisations who have been funded by the Women’s Urgent Support Fund Round 1 include…
Misgav is a specialist organisation led by and for disabled women and their carers. A grant of £60,000 will be used to safeguard food provision and help maintain the organisation’s employment programme to up-skill disabled women and their carers into work. The grant will also support the Misgav’s work boosting the financial resilience of its young volunteers, which includes setting personal development goals and personalised work experience opportunities, which in turn will help safeguard staff roles.
The Magpie Project is a women’s organisation supporting mothers with No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) and their children. A grant of £60,000 will be used to uplift the salary of Magpie’s Donations Manager who is on the frontline of supporting women. Funds will also contribute toward essential items for mothers with NRPF that have babies/ children under five. Baby bank running costs will be covered to meet increased demand on this service. This work will be enhanced by broader support around immigration, welfare and housing.
Tavga is a grassroots, by and for community group who work with some of the most marginalised women in Newcastle. A grant of £23,100 will respond to priority needs of refugee and asylum-seeking women through the provision of food parcels, clothing, personal hygiene products and transport and childcare vouchers. The funds will also create a part-time Support Worker role who will facilitate distributions, lead 1-1 support sessions and sustain vital volunteer hours. The funds will also cover the cost of Tavga’s increased rent, utilities and building maintenance.
To see a full list of 31 grant partners, amount awarded and locations please go here.
The Smallwood Trust looks forward to supporting specialist women’s organisations and services over the next 3 years.
About The National Lottery Community Fund
We are the largest non-statutory community funder in the UK – community is at the heart of our purpose, vision and name.
We support activities that create resilient communities that are more inclusive and environmentally sustainable and that will strengthen society and improve lives across the UK.
We’re proud to award money raised by National Lottery players to communities across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and to work closely with government to distribute vital grants and funding from key Government programmes and initiatives.
As well as responding to what communities tell us is important to them, our funding is focused on four key missions, supporting communities to:
- Come together
- Be environmentally sustainable
- Help children and young people thrive
- Enable people to live healthier lives.
Thanks to the support of National Lottery players, we distribute around £500 million a year through 10,000+ grants and plan to invest over £4 billion of funding into communities by 2030. We’re privileged to be able to work with the smallest of local groups right up to UK-wide charities, enabling people and communities to bring their ambitions to life.
National Lottery players raise over £30 million each week for good causes throughout the UK. Since The National Lottery began in 1994, £47 billion has been raised and more than 670,000 individual grants have been made across the UK – the equivalent of around 240 National Lottery grants in every UK postcode district.
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About the Smallwood Trust
The Smallwood Trust has been helping women across the UK out of poverty for 136 years. Our programmes provide grant funding and support to enable women to become financially resilient and to ensure economic systems work for them rather than against them. Half of the UK population are women – therefore
our approach not only matters for individual women, enabling them to thrive economically and overcome financially stressful events, it is also critical for the UK economy. While we will continue to meet the immediate needs of women facing financial insecurity, we will also increasingly focus on tackling the systems that cause gendered poverty.
We are delighted to be supported by AMAL to deliver Kahani project at WomenZone.
The aim of the project is to enable women to share their own stories with each other and then use those stories as a basis for a performance that will happen at WomenZone and other venues in Bradford, accompanied by an encounter event, such as a discussion or Q&A.
Amal works to tackle a root cause of the discrimination that adversely affects the lives of all
Muslims in the UK– a dominant narrative which is negative, stereotyping and monolithic.
We exist to help shift the narrative to one that is confident, diverse and just.
Amal challenges the narrative by supporting Muslims to unleash their creative potential. We
do so by enabling three sets of stakeholders – Muslim communities, artists, and mainly
mainstream arts and cultural organisations – to work closely together to grow opportunities
for Muslims to fully express and realise their creative potential and to share and celebrate
this creativity with others.
WomenZone have today announced a new community experience programme funded by NCS (National Citizen Service) that will support young people across Bradford.
The grant is part of a significant £20m funding package that NCS Trust have awarded to organisations across England for the delivery of community-based experiences at a local and grassroots level.
These new experiences will complement NCS’ existing away from home residential offer by providing more opportunities for teenagers to engage in local activities that foster skills development, deepen their understanding of the community, and empower them to contribute positively to its improvement. The grants will also support organisations that cater to specific groups of young people who may not have participated in previous NCS initiatives.
In collaboration with the National Youth Agency and StreetGames, NCS assessed more than 400 applications and WomenZone was selected as one of around 100 organisations to receive funding.
Over the past decade, more than 800,000 young people have benefitted from an NCS experience, dedicating over 18 million hours to community based social action, while gaining invaluable life experiences.
Rubina Khalid, CO-CEO, WomenZone,“The grant will allow WomenZone to empower young people, raising aspirations and supporting them to be better equipped with any challenges they may face in the future”.
Mark Gifford, CEO of NCS Trust, added: “I am delighted to welcome a diverse range of local, grassroots and community organisations from across the youth sector to deliver reimagined NCS experiences. This allows us to reach more young people than ever before, ensuring they are equipped with the skills and perspective to become work ready and world ready. Additionally, our grants for targeted experiences will enable us to reach underserved young people and communities.”
Gifford added, “Together, we will work towards creating a country of confident, connected, caring citizens where everyone feels at home.”
Coinciding with the IWD’s theme, we celebrated International Women’s Day with service users, partners, friends, and families, at WomenZone to mark women’s achievements and understand how equity works in a working environment and in our daily lives. We were absolutely honoured to have had our guest speakers Sofia Buncy (West Yorkshire Lieutenant) and Mazish Ahmed (Genetics Project Co-ordinator) to share their journey with us. We would like to thank our talented entertainers, Shagun Bharti and Kousher, for the phenomenal performances during the event and everyone who joined us during this special time.
We were very pleased with the outcome and look forward to embracing equity everyday. “While equality gives the same support to everyone at your workplace, equity gives you the support that you require which might not be suitable for your work colleague as their circumstance is different from yours.” Sadia Sajid (CO-CEO at WomenZone).
