How our grants impact different disadvantaged backgrounds

Social exclusion can be experienced for a number of different reasons. Some of those reasons are economic, but many are more complex and arise out of a lack of support for minorities of many different types in our country. This year, The Foundation provided funding to Lifeshare which supports homeless and vulnerable people in central Manchester and the Initiative Factory which performs a similar role from its community hub in Liverpool. A grant to The Future Female Society has enabled a project to provide essential digital and employability skills to migrant, refugee and asylum-seeking women in Suffolk, while Codebar benefited from a grant to run coding workshops for women, LGBTQ+ and people belonging to some of the most underrepresented ethnic groups in tech.

The Foundation also provided funding to organisations focused on those in need in their local community. Blythe Community Enterprise Centre received a grant to run an innovative digital skills education programme throughout the South East of Northumberland, utilising a mobile tutor and modern methods to reach rural communities and village centres. The Foundation also approved a grant for St Francis Employability which provides meaningful education and engagement based out of a community hub in Radford, Coventry. The Kent Enterprise Trust was offered a grant to deliver similar programmes to deprived communities in the South East. The Foundation also provided funding to Citizens On-line, for a programme working to support people in Gwynedd, North Wales.

Physical Disability is another area which is not always considered when thinking of digital exclusion, but we have discovered this this is a huge and largely underfunded area of support. This year, the Foundation provided a grant to ASPIRE (The Association for Spinal Injury, Rehabilitation and Reintegration) for an assistive technology programme which supports people with spinal injury interact with essential digital resources. We also continued to support a number of charities working to support people with vision impairment (Middlesex Association for the Blind), hearing impairment (Citizens Advice Mid-Mercia) and disability of all types (Foresight NE Lincolnshire) to improve their lives through engagement with the digital world.

A number of charities working in the Mental Health arena also won a number of grants from The Foundation. One Place East, a charity working in East London received a grant for a digital assistance project to help people suffering from mental ill-health, as well as deaf and physically disabled people in the area. Other charities tackling the challenge of digital inclusion for people suffering with mental ill-health is the Community Drug and Alcohol Recovery Service (CDARS) and MIND in Harrow. All these programmes offered tailored and sometimes one-to-one support services to provide meaningful and sustainable improvements to peoples’ lives.

A new area of focus for The Foundation this year is the support of people living with various types of neurodiversity. Our staff-sponsored pillar offered up a number of charities working in this space, but we also got the opportunity to support organisations working to bridge the digital divide. The Foundation awarded a grant of £48,000 towards a programme called ‘Digitally You’ to help people with autism and their families towards digital inclusion. The Garwood Foundation also received a grant for the provision of IT sessions for people with profound and multiple learning disorders in South-East London.

The Foundation has also helped both the young and the elderly this year through a wide variety of programmes bringing those currently excluded from engaging with the digital world towards opportunities which increase either their future prospects or their current quality of life. Home Instead Charities UK received a grant from The Foundation to provide digital skills drop-in sessions at community hubs for the elderly up and down the UK. Clapton Common Boys Club received a grant to deliver a digital education programme to deprived children aged 5 to 17 years. The Harmony Youth Project, based in the North-West of England, also received a grant to provide an essential digital skills programme for young people to discover skills and boost their self-confidence. Finally, Age UK in Hammersmith and Fulham received funding for an outreach worker to extend the capabilities of a digital inclusion programme for the older generation in South West London.