July's Community Stories

Lenton’s Lane Baptist Church receives funding from the Recovery and Support Grant and Severn Trent!

Lenton’s Lane Baptist Church is situated in the Northeast of the city and lies within the Longford Ward. The Community Resilience Team (CRT) initially contacted the church during the Covid19 lockdown period but were told it was closed until things returned to normal, but they would appreciate support once normality returned as they had ideas for projects they would like to run.

Once the lockdown periods ended the team engaged with the church to discuss their ideas. The church leader Barry Keegan said they wanted to resume their youth activities due to the impact the lockdown periods had on their mental health, and they needed more equipment to encourage a larger number of young people. He also said he wanted to increase the number of activities in the community hall, particularly around healthy eating and wanted to renovate the kitchen area.

The CRT officer advised him to apply firstly to apply to the teams Recovery and Support Grant for equipment for the youth group. Secondly, he advised him to meet with the local funding officer from the Severn Trent Community Fund for the Kitchen refurbishment to discuss the groups eligibility, in which they were given the go ahead to apply.

The team assisted the group with both applications, firstly to apply for the teams Recovery and Support Grant which was successful and £650 was awarded to the church for room hire costs, arts and crafts equipment, an air hockey table, and a new volleyball net.

The second application to the Severn Trent Community Fund was for a much larger amount of funding on which the team worked closely with the church to complete to make sure that the application had been filled out correctly and that the correct documents had been uploaded to the form. A few weeks after submitting the application the group were contacted by Severn Trent to inform them that they had been awarded £20,000 towards re-furbishing their kitchen area.

The church were over the moon to receive all of this funding and are continuing to work with the team to look at other available funding opportunities, to support the groups that use the facility and to set up others once the new kitchen facility is installed.

Clothing Coventry School Uniform Project

The Community Resilience Team have recently been working with Clothing Coventry to get this much needed project off the ground. Working with the Councils Education Improvement Standards & The Coventry Law Centre the group have managed to secure a total of £38,000 to get this project to provide preloved uniform to families that need support operational.

Clothing Coventry will be targeting Hillfields and Foleshill initially and branching into other areas across the city as this service develops. This will enable families to access & donate uniforms locally in community venues across the city.

Clothing Coventry will be working closely with schools, food hubs, while also having pop-ups at HAF Projects and community events. Any organisation interested in being a pop -up venue or regular venue for families to access this service please contact Katie from Clothing Coventry; katie@clothingcoventry.org