Team London Small Grants

Havering Volunteer Centre 
Havering Volunteer Centre acts a pathway provider to 260 community groups, reaching 1,040 beneficiaries a year. Their project seeks to build connections with social prescribers, working to improve the health and well-being of beneficiaries by providing them access to non-medical support which increases their social engagement and prevents ill health by promoting healthy behaviours. The project reaches a wide range of beneficiaries including frequent attendees to primary care, recent hospital admissions, those socially isolated and those with low level mental health and/or social needs, such as housing, employment or benefit concerns.  

Club Soda 
Club Soda’s project, ‘Gig Buddies’ is a volunteer programme that matches people with and without learning disabilities who have similar interests, to go to events together. They ensure that people with learning disabilities don't miss out on a social life by connecting them to their community and empowering them to build new friendships. This year, Gig Buddies Croydon is piloting the Gig Buddies Social Prescribing Project. Their aim is to extend the positive impact that they have had on tackling social isolation and loneliness in their beneficiaries to include their volunteer workforce. 

Forty Hall Community Vineyard
Forty Hall Community Vineyard runs the ‘Flourish Project, which seeks to re-connect isolated and marginalised people with others and with nature through supported, outdoor volunteering on their 10 acre vineyard. Through engaging in meaningful and productive work and social activities such as shared lunches, beneficiaries can maintain or regain their physical and mental good health and expand their social networks. Many volunteers join the organisations at a time in their lives when they are experiencing high levels of loneliness and social isolation as a result of key life changes including retirement, bereavement, parenting, mental and/or physical ill health, unemployment, upheaval and disconnection (due to relocation, refugee status, domestic violence, etc.)

Outside Edge Theatre Company
Outside Edge Theatre Company brings drama and drama therapy to those who are working to recover from substance misuse. Over the course of their project, they will be delivering peer-led Wellbeing Drama Taster Sessions in publicly funded drug and alcohol treatment facilities and mental health settings across London's 33 boroughs. The sessions will show referrals how group activities can help them to feel less lonely and socially isolated following treatment and how drama and other arts-based social prescriptions can support their recovery maintenance.

Riive
Riive is a digital storytelling project where older people, who are lonely and socially isolated, are matched to local, creative volunteers who have skills in digital storytelling and want to support the wellbeing of older people. Volunteers and beneficiaries will meet in points of interest in the local community and work together to create photography and short films about the life of the older person, to allow them to share their story. The culmination of the project will be the public sharing of the co-produced media, with the aim of humanising older people, and highlighting the important contribution they can make to future generations through digital storytelling.

HostNation
HostNation is a digital befriending service connecting lonely and socially isolated refugees and asylum seekers to volunteer Londoners to offer friendship and engagement. Volunteers sign-up and refugee referrals are digitalised to scale up opportunities. Geography is key so that the project can introduce people who live close to each other, and they can meet up in their local community. Volunteers are asked to commit to an initial three months, meeting their befriendee for a few hours at least fortnightly, and acting as social hosts. This project will connect HostNation’s existing work formally to Camden's social prescribing network and referral pathways to support locally-based refugees and asylum-seekers.

A Mile in her Shoes
A Mile in her Shoes create, lead and support running fitness groups for women who may be vulnerable to homelessness through a volunteer-led programme, working to identify and remove any barriers to people taking part in exercise. Through link workers or self-referral, women experiencing multiple disadvantages will be connected to the charity's existing running inspired fitness sessions, working towards being accompanied to ParkRun when they feel ready to take that step.  Evaluation of ParkRun has demonstrated its physical, mental and social benefits. This project builds on the established social prescribing initiative between ParkRun and Royal College of GPs.

Learn English at Home
Learn English at Home provides free one to one home based language and signposting support for ethnic minority adults who are marginalised and isolated due to their low levels of English. They support those who have complex needs and are unable to access classes due to their ill-health, caring responsibilities and/or illiteracy. This service is provided by specially trained local volunteers who create a bespoke programme of support for their clients.  

Entelechy Arts
Entelechy Arts’s are working to incorporate social prescribing into their successful work engaging isolated older people in a range of community activities. Their project, ‘Meet Me in the South’ , builds on the success of Entelechy Arts and the Albany's award winning Meet Me at the Albany project, an arts project led by formerly isolated older people. The project is designed to support older people experiencing loneliness to connect with the cultural and social life of their communities.

Hackney Herbal
Hackney Herbal support Hackney residents who are interested in participating in social gardening and nature-based activities by providing weekly activities offered at their garden in Hackney Wick. The project includes trips, talks, walks, workshops and events to connect people and plants in a social way encourage people to make connections and form relationships with each other.

Leaders in Community
Leaders in Community work with socially isolated young people (aged 18-25) who are referred to their project via social prescribers in the borough. The young people are introduced to a range of activities on offer at the centre such as ‘Food for Thought’- which uses cooking to engage the young people with a corporate volunteer. Through the project, beneficiaries will receive mentoring with the corporate volunteer to receive tips and career advice. 

Sport 4 Health
This project supports older LGBT+ and BAME people (aged 50+) with a weekly programme of sports and social activities to improve their health and well-being; reduce their isolation; increase their integration within the wider community and provide more opportunities for volunteering.

The Parent House 
The Parent House run a programme which trains parent mentors to support families in Islington who are facing barriers and difficulties to living well. Their project provides additional training to their parent mentors to enable them to support mentee parents to address the loneliness and isolation they are experiencing or at risk of, as all are disadvantaged in some way. 

Shpresa Programme 
Shpresa Programme is a project based within the Albanian community, recruiting and training young volunteers develop and run intergenerational community activities for members of the Albanian speaking community. 

Volunteers in the project will work to plan and deliver a series of community activities bringing together different generations of the Albanian community and facilitating new friendships. Activities will be finalised by the young volunteers but are likely to include sessions such as: 

• family sessions - children's sports and games, and a chance for parents to socialise
• film Club – showing popular Albanian films, with refreshments available
• Albanian conversation club – helping young children to learn/retain/practise their community language by talking with older members of the community.

Advice 4 Renters
This project supports vulnerable private tenants who are lonely and/or socially isolated. Building on their previous social prescribing based work, they will recruit and train a new cohort of volunteer mentors in a new, person-centred way of interviewing service users. The aim of this is to gain a broad understanding of each person's needs and aspirations and enable agencies to work collaboratively to provide a holistic service aimed at increasing health and wellbeing.

These grants will help run volunteering projects that bring Londoners together and lead to improvements in social integration. 

Abbey Community Centre
Abbey's Saturday Community Café Foods of the World cooking sessions will be a weekly community café that uses food surplus donated by a local charity, providing fresh, healthy, low-cost meals from around the world to local people. Volunteers will cook and share dishes from their countries and bring in new younger volunteers and older people whose mother tongue is not English

Autus
Connect for Democracy will see 20 volunteers with experience of participation in democracy from public, private and third sectors, working with 20 autistic young people to increase their knowledge and understanding of democracy. The young people will then create multi-media learning resources to share information about local democratic process with neurotypical young people from across South London as part of a roadshow. The project brings autistic people (well-known to struggle with social interaction and largely socially isolated) into contact with people who are different from themselves, in a way that appeals to their strengths, and helps other people to understand their needs and condition better. 

Doorstep Library Network
Volunteer Readers will spend time reading with pre and primary school children living in deprived housing estates and who are at risk of underachievement. Volunteers will visit the family home on a weekly basis, read with the children and build trust with the parents. Volunteers tend to live off the estates and come from different socio-economic backgrounds than the families.   

Faiths Forum for London
Young people aged 13-18 from faith communities in six London boroughs who want to help improve the local Green environment, are matched with a volunteer aged 60+ from a different faith background who are willing to pass on their gardening skills and enthusiasm to a new generation

Hoxton Health  
Volunteers will provide support to service users, who due to mental health frailty or disability, need extra time or support. Volunteers come from a wide range of groups, including people with mental health issues, younger people wanting work experience, older people that have just retired and carers that want to be more involved in their community. Service users also come from a range of backgrounds. This project is to establish a Volunteer Coordinator role to enable the volunteer support to grow.

Lewisham Refugee Welcome Team 
They will set up a group of volunteers to become an organisation so that they can join Citizens UK. The group of volunteers have already worked together to help to resettle 15 refugee families in Lewisham, and the Mayor has now committed to bring in 100 more families in 5 years. By becoming a formal group and joining Citizens UK, they will be able to increase the numbers and types of volunteers they can work with, establish a leadership team and fundraise, enabling them to have greater impact on the resettlement of refugees.

Seeds for Growth 
Volunteers from across the Isle of Dogs will improve and maintain front gardens for the elderly tenants and residents who are no longer able to garden for themselves mixing people from different backgrounds. They will also construct a new garden for the community on wasteland located behind one of the housing blocks providing a place for community interaction.

St Francis at the Engine Room   
Bringing together young people at risk of serious youth violence with newly arrived to the area professional people to share skills and work together, a programme supporting the young people and building their skills, including a focus on employability.

The Bike Project    
Volunteers pair with refugees and asylum seekers to undertake cycling trips together, aimed at building confidence and knowledge of road cycling, reducing isolation, improving wellbeing and encouraging social integration and greater independence. 60 volunteers and a minimum of 60 beneficiaries.

The Hebe Foundation    
Corporate professional volunteers provide dragons den afternoons in their offices and deliver workshops based on core business and employment skills for low income/disadvantaged youth from across London.

The New Cross Gate Trust  
Holding a conversation café where ESOL students can practice their English with socially isolated local residents in a culturally diverse neighbourhood.

In partnership with Thrive LDN and the #iWill Fund, these grants helped fund voluntary sector organisations to run projects which encouraged young Londoners to volunteer or take part in social action.

Action for Refugees in Lewisham (AFRIL)
Up skilling young volunteers to act as peer supporters for participants at Saturday School and volunteering at other projects such as the Helping Hands Food Bank. 

Afro-Brazilian Arts and Cultural Exchange
Engaging young people with Afro-Brazilian martial arts or music and dance and training the young people to volunteer and help run sessions for younger peers. 

Community Action for Refugees and Asylum Seekers (CARAS) 
Enabling refugee and asylum seeking young people to create benches and planters for community spaces, and run workshops and events to create a more welcoming environment for the most vulnerable residents in the community. 

Dagenham Bangladeshi Women & Children’s Association 
This project will upskill NEET young people to deliver an intergenerational horticultural project and train as peer mentors. 

IROKO
An intergenerational music making project bringing together older people, many with dementia, and young volunteers.  

Let's Go Outside and Learn CIC
A project working with young carers to develop a campaign around parks and open spaces, which will include young people led research, developing resources for park users and allowing the young people to report back on their findings. 

Lewisham Youth Theatre
A project enabling Young Ambassadors to join the Lewisham Youth Theatre Members Committee and make decisions on youth theatre activities and assist on planning projects.

Partnership for Young London
A project training young people aged 12 - 20 in care or leaving care in peer research skills to raise awareness of key issues faced by young people (education, money and budgeting, accommodation). 

Rio Ferdinand Foundation
Recruiting young people as peer leaders who will learn skills such as project management, budgeting and community development whilst leading grass roots community projects in areas of sports, arts and media. 

Somali Advice and Forum of Information (SAAFI)
Somali young people at risk of exclusion will take part in group workshops whilst receiving one on one mentoring from Somali university students. They will then take up volunteer placements in their local community.

Stonewall Housing
Developing a team of young volunteer ambassadors who have or are experiencing homelessness as a result of their sexual identity.  

The Avenues Youth Project
Young people will be trained as peer mentors and work with youth workers to support their younger peers, as well as attending training workshops on topics such as safeguarding, mental health first aid and mentoring methods. 

Westminster House Youth Club
A project providing support for targeted young people who have not been previously involved in volunteering attending the Westminster House Youth Club. This project will encourage them to become involved in activities such as First Aid Training, Fire Safety Courses and the Vulnerable People’s Food Parcel Programme. 

Young Roots
Establishing a Youth Leadership Group for young refugees to engage a further 150 young people in volunteering and social change. Young people will be up skilled during learning weekends away from home, where they will take part in leadership and campaigning workshops.

These grants supported older people to connect with their local community through volunteering.

Cara Trust
The Cara Trust recruited 10 people aged 59+ with HIV as volunteers, to provide peer and/or buddy services to elderly and/or frail people with HIV. 

Entelechy Arts (Meet Me at the Albany)
The project launched a volunteer-led befriending programme to support isolated older people to connect with or re-engage with their local community and activities. 

Holborn Community Association – Digital Wisdom
The project recruited volunteers to deliver IT classes and one-to- one IT support sessions to older members of the community. Some of these were Bengali/Sylheti speakers, reflecting the aim of attracting older members of the local BAME and primarily Bangladeshi community to access the older people’s services.

Hounslow Action for Youth
The project recruited 40 newly retired people to provide one-to-one support for 40 young people. They engaged the young people in beekeeping and creating multi-purpose products from the harvested honey and beeswax, packaged and gifted to older people attending a weekly Age Concern drop-in. 

Jewish Volunteer Network
The project promoted volunteering among over 55s by creating a workforce of volunteers who became befrienders, supporting the elderly and others with chronic ailments, to combat isolation and loneliness. 

London Bubble Theatre Company
A volunteering scheme was developed aimed at people entering retirement, inviting them to support older people’s engagement in an intergenerational project called Primary. 200 volunteers, half aged 59-69, were offered training in oral history interviewing and supported to make links with at least 80 older people. Volunteers gathered testimony, supported attendance at rehearsals and performances and enabled older people to get to know the cast.

Merton Home Tutoring Service
Merton Home Tutoring Service taught English at home to people in Wandsworth who cannot attend formal classes either because of childcare commitments or because their English is below the entry level required to start college. Volunteer tutors were recruited and trained to work one-to-one with the learners.
 

ODL Volunteer Support
Opening Doors London increased the number of volunteers recruited to support older LGBT* people, supporting these volunteers through regular volunteer forum meetings, managing and promoting training opportunities and co-ordinating the placement of volunteers across London.

Southall Community Alliance
Southall Community Alliance worked with a voluntary sector consortium with 5 small groups to recruit and train 100+ BAME residents as Health Ambassadors. There were around five training sessions to recruit older ambassadors who advised other older people to local health and social care services that they were previously unaware of or unable to access themselves. 

St. Mary’s Secret Garden
St Mary’s Secret Garden provided weekly community gardening sessions for older adults in Hackney to support and develop the local environment. The majority of these gardening volunteers had learning disabilities. 

Third Age Project 
The project recruited older people to take on new volunteering roles, utilising their skills to support the charity to be able to demonstrate that it has a major beneficial impact on the lives of many isolated and hard to reach elderly residents within a diverse deprived neighbourhood.

Walworth Golden Oldies
Walworth Golden Oldies Community Care Project worked for 7 hours a week across 40 weeks by recruiting a volunteer coordinator, who recruited and supervised a team of 20 specially recruited retired volunteers to provide chairside support once a week, helping 60 older people to access online services.

The grants funded local initiatives which helped increase group volunteering and provided more speed volunteering opportunities.

Selby Trust 
Provided more speed and group volunteering roles around environmental and sustainable projects at their Tottenham site.

Worldwrite 
Provided volunteering opportunities in an innovative media project for young people helping them to voice their opinions of global issues.

Bee Urban 
Engaged expert volunteers in environmental issues to share their experience with local communities.

Sutton Community Farm 
Developed more group volunteering roles that helped them to further develop this 7 acre small holding to grow even more produce and teach growing and horticultural skills.

Wise Thoughts 
Recruited even more volunteers to ensure that the LGBT events throughout the year had even more impact and attracted more visitors.

Cordwainers Grow 
Provided volunteer-led activity sessions in the Hackney community which ranged from hands-on planting and growing sessions to wider skills of marketing and social media around local projects.

Big Dance 2016 
People Dancing – this project recruited and trained hundred of volunteers to help deliver the Big Dance 2016 across the capital.

Goodgym 
Recruited more volunteers in more boroughs across London to get fit and do good at the same time by running to community projects, helping out, then running back again.

Brixton People’s Kitchen 
Using surplus food from local green grocers and markets, this project recruited and trained more volunteers to help run their mobile kitchen that dispenses free meals in Brixton.

Create London 
This innovative project worked alongside young volunteers in Dagenham & Barking and the surrounding areas, picking fruit and producing a marketable branded drink. Young volunteers took part in every part of the production process from fruit picking to workshops on marketing.

The Maypole Project 
Recruited volunteers to give 121 support to their children on sporting activity trips.

Sufra NW London 
Transformed a piece of derelict ground on an inner city estate with volunteers from every section of the local community, to create a food growing garden.

Haringey Mencap 
The Give Project offered short volunteering roles to support their vulnerable clients in a range of exciting new activities.

Delete Blood Cancer UK
This project created a number of information hubs in various London boroughs, manned by specially trained volunteers, to raise awareness of the disease and provide information and signposting.

Providence Row 
Created more volunteer roles for businesses, to up-skill their clients and share knowledge and experience in a range of activities.

Volunteer Centre Kensington & Chelsea 
Recruited a range of volunteers from the local community to meet and greet visitors to Portobello and Goldbourne Road markets.

Deen City Farm 
Recruited more local volunteers from both business and community, to help maintain this inspiring five-acre farm which also offers food growing, classroom studies, and therapeutic services including a riding school.

The grants funded local initiatives which help volunteering amongst young people and other groups who may face difficulty in finding suitable opportunities.

Foodcycle 
Trained unemployed young people to create affordable meals and help run the Community Café in Bromley-by-Bow.

Green Corridor 
Engaged young volunteers (14-25) to turn an allotment at the heart of Heathrow Airport, into a thriving wildlife space for the local community.

TimeBank 
Matched business mentors with young people 16-24 who have been in care.

The Maypole Project 
Recruited volunteers to support young people with complex illnesses to engage in sporting activities.

The Hebe Foundation 
A business and leadership project which used peer volunteers aged 17 and adults to teach a wide range of transferable skills including marketing, pitching, buying and selling to 14 to 19-year-olds.

Selfless 
Trained volunteers to be 'London Health Ambassadors' and share important health messages within hard-to-reach communities.

Sutton Community Farm 
Farm based buddying scheme which taught and mentored young volunteers, some of whom have learning difficulties or other disabilities, about managing a farm and working with others.

Wide Horizons 
Supported volunteers to transform a five-acre area in South London into well-managed woodland.

Project Dirt 
Enabled Team London volunteers to access a wider range of small locally based community projects.

Spacehive 
Matched Civic Crowdfunding community projects with volunteers.

These grants funded local initiatives which demonstrated innovation through technology, or new ways of working, and encouraged volunteering. 

Action Tutoring - Tutoring project

Capital Growth - Community greening

The Conservation Volunteers - Green gyms project

Envision - Community apprentice scheme

The Hackney Pirates - Literacy project

London Sport

Selfless - Online university recruitment platform

TimeBank - One-to-one mentoring

Trees for Cities - Edible playgrounds project

Wheels for Wellbeing - Cycling lessons for the disabled