Funders interested in working collaboratively to support refugees may be interested in a new pooled fund due to be launched by Comic Relief, the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, Barrow Cadbury Trust and UK Community Foundations. The fund is designed to provide support to small local groups working to welcome refugees and asylum seekers into their communities. It is hoped that the fund can be launched in January with a view to making the first grant decisions in March 2016.
Find out more here, and if you would like to find out more about this initiative and/or are interested in joining please contact Cristina Andreatta, [email protected]
Use of funds
The New Beginnings Fund will award grants of up to £10,000 to frontline groups working to support refugees and asylum seekers across the UK. In exceptional cases, the fund will consider grants of up to £20,000 for bids including multiple local partners. The fund is UK wide and all grants will be for the duration of one year. The fund will prioritise local groups, with turnovers of less than £250,000 who can explain the need for additional short to medium term support and how this will add capacity to their current work with local refugees and asylum seekers. Groups must be able to evidence an increase in demand for services and explain how they plan to respond using this funding, (larger organisations with turnovers of up to £1million are not excluded from applying for funding however, priority will be given to smaller locally based organisations.) The types of activity that New Beginnings is likely to fund are proposals from groups that are led by local refugees and asylum seekers, which offer guidance, counselling, community integration and welcoming activities with existing local communities, groups supporting volunteering and community activities. The fund will not be supporting activities promoting party political activity; major capital costs; individual sponsorship; activities generating private profit; statutory services; faith groups are welcome to apply but activities which evangelise or proselytise religious beliefs will not be eligible. New Beginnings aims to provide funding to increase the capacity of small to medium sized local organisations to meet the support needs of refugees and asylum seekers to mobilise other forms of local support to ease their integration into local communities
