More Community Grants Awarded

I am pleased to say that there have been some more community grants awarded from our County Councillor budgets to fund a number of projects for young people in Grove and Wantage. Councillor Jenny Hannaby and I have pooled our funds for the following schemes:

Vale and Downland Museum project 'Alfie and Friends' for families with pre-school children.  This will provide activities and craft sessions with the help of museum volunteers for very young children enabling them and their carers to explore and engage with the collection.  'Alfie' is a toy bear who will 'introduce' the sessions of play, story-telling and music-making aswell as finding different things in the museum.  This is hoped to be launched in January 2013.  The intention is to make the museum a welcoming, exciting and fun place to be.  We have given £500 to this project.

South and Vale Carers' Centre and Young Carers' Project to fund carers' respite breaks for young carers aged from 8 to 17.  Young carers in our community are looking after a parent or sibling who is disabled or has a physical or mental illness, and need to have a chance to experience normal childhood activities by having an occasional break from their caring responsibilities.  There are currently 282 young carers registered as active and 20 of these are from Grove and Wantage.  We have given £1200 towards this project.  Readers of my blog will recall that I heard about the Young Carers' Festival when I appeared on the Sunday Politics programme.

Sweatbox Rock in the Park project is a community live music event organised by teenagers from the Sweatbox Youth Centre.  This popular event was previously the highlight of an annual programme of activites, but has not happened for 3 years due to restructuring of youth services and budget restrictions.  This event is planned for Spring or early Summer 2013 and is much valued by our young people helping them to promote musical talent.  We have given £600 towards this project.

There is still some funding available if anyone has a local need to fund a community project.  Please get in touch with me if you wish to discuss.