Maryhill Community Central Hall and Govanhill Baths Community Trust benefit from the latest round of funding
Community groups in Glasgow and the surrounding areas have shared donations totalling more than £1 million from the Glasgow Community Anchors’ Fund, with the latest cash helping to support people during the cost of living crisis.
Since launching in 2020, the fund – which is a partnership between the HFD Foundation and Virgin Money Foundation – has awarded 49 grants to support 27 different organisations in their mission to help people across the city. This year, 13 grants totalling £322,000 were pledged to essential community groups, bringing the total to over £1m.
Each community organisation plays an important role in their local area, with their impact spanning an estimated 180,000 people. This includes working with people of all ages to offer support through a range of essential projects and services.
Local groups to benefit from the latest round of funding include Maryhill Community Central Hall and Govanhill Baths Community Trust.
Maryhill Community Central Hall has been awarded £17,000 to help provide a range of essential support for its network, including funding for emergency energy cards to ensure people’s homes are heated and warm, reducing the impact for households experiencing fuel poverty. It also helps individuals with access to devices such as recycled laptops and mobiles, and broadband connectivity, and will use the funding to expand its community fridge offering.
Mark McRitchie, chief executive of Community Central Hall, said: “The community is really struggling right now with the impact of the rising cost of living, on top of the long-term challenges of poverty and exclusion. Additional funding will enable us to provide meaningful assistance for things like food, warmth and access to digital services to the local community.”
Funding of £29,493 to Govanhill Baths’ flagship programme, The People’s Pantry will allow the programme to expand to provide food for over 2,500 people per week. This represents over 5% of the local community. As well as addressing the urgent need for food, The People’s Pantry enables people to learn more about food, sustainability, growing vegetables and cooking. Providing there is space, anyone can join for £5 a year and do a weekly shop for £2.50.
The Glasgow Community Anchors’ Fund plays a vital, practical role in reducing the impact of poverty and the rising cost of living across the city. The recipient groups are home to foodbanks or community pantries, run free holiday play schemes and furniture recycling schemes, provide guidance and training in cooking on a budget, support grow your own schemes, act as a base for debt advice, link people to sources of lower cost credit, tackle fuel and data poverty, help people build digital skills to get online, into work or training and support refugees and asylum seekers.
