£75,000 grants available to support employment and skills projects

Charities and community groups in the South and South West of England are invited to apply for a share of £75,000 funding for employment and skills projects.

Sovereign Housing Association, working with not-for-profit digital fundraising platform The Good Exchange, has grants available for community projects that focus on supporting people to upskill, access training, find work or better work, or self-employment opportunities.

Projects need to be based within three miles of a Sovereign home and could be anything from community learning programmes and job clubs to homework clubs and vocational programmes.

Applications for up to £5,000 funding need to be submitted on Sovereign’s page on The Good Exchange by Friday 10 December.

Erica Watts, Head of Employment and Training at Sovereign, said: “Recent analysis shows that the pandemic has supercharged UK entrepreneurship, with the Office for National Statistics reporting that there were over 1.1 million UK job vacancies between July and September. It really is a job-seeker and entrepreneur’s market at the moment.

“That’s why we want to support projects that help people find the job they want, get the skills they need, or launch the business of their dreams.”  

Julian May, Head of Collaborative Funding for The Good Exchange and Greenham Trust, added: “We encourage all community organisations that deliver employment and training services in areas where Sovereign has homes to apply for this new Employment and Training Fund via The Good Exchange online fundraising platform.  

“In addition, if you represent a local funding organisation or business that would like to contribute to the fund and so enable even more people to benefit, please do get in touch via julian.may@thegoodexchange.com.”