Grants are a ‘godsend’
Cash boost for Village Centre and dementia charity
Two vital East Kilbride charities welcomed a share of nearly £18,000 this week – describing the grants as a “godsend”.
Community hub The Village Centre and East Kilbride and District Dementia Carers Group were awarded £12,762 and £5000 of funding respectively from the latest tranche of the Bank of Scotland Foundation’s small and medium grants.
And the cash boost couldn’t have come at a better time for the local causes which were struggling to stay afloat.
Village Centre manager Joanne Gray told the News the money will be used to hire a caretaker to keep the popular facility – which hosts 120 community groups each week – open in the evenings. She said: “Without this money we would have had to close in the evenings when a large proportion of our user groups use the centre.
“I was at the point of despair when applying for this grant so I’m absolutely elated we got the funding.
“Because we are a charity we rely heavily on funding and any money we get is used for the upkeep of the building and to pay staff.
“We can now stay open for another year and hope to expand again to cater for our users.”
EK Dementia Carers Group’s small grant will help the charity deliver care and support to people with dementia and their carers from their base in Greenhills.
Group coordinator Brian Doig said: “This grant has come at just the perfect time as we are still quite a bit short of our fundraising target for the year and were potentially facing a deficit that could have seriously impacted upon our service provision.
“This grant will go a long way to addressing the shortfall and we cannot thank the Bank of Scotland Foundation enough.”
Philip Grant, chair of the foundation’s board of trustees, said: “Finding the funding to continue operating is a pressure charities regularly face, so we’re delighted to have been able to provide grants to The Village Centre and East Kilbride and District Dementia Carers Group.
“They are just two of 118 Scottish charities that shared over £1.4million from our small, medium and large grants programmes during 2016. The work these charities do is invaluable and the Bank of Scotland Foundation is proud to support them in making a tangible difference to the local communities in which they operate. We look forward to helping many more Scottish charities support their communities in 2017.”
EK Dementia Carers received another boost this month after being named charity partner for Marks and Spencer Kingsgate.
The store’s first fundraising drive for the group saw 80 volunteers take part in an in-store charity bagpack.
And the successful event raised a whopping £5200 in just one week – taking EK Dementia Carers fundraising pot for 2017 to £10,200.
Brian added: “This has really helped us towards reaching our fundraising target for this year.”