Connecting and empowering: Supporting the youth sector to tackle loneliness
Our funding for the Belong Collective and National Youth Partnership helped youth workers better understand and tackle rising levels of loneliness during 2020 lockdowns
Supporting prospective Black and Asian trustees to get on board
We made a £20,500 grant to help increase the racial diversity of charity trustee boards so they can better represent and support their communities.
Beechbrae: Providing financial security when it mattered most
An extended repayment holiday on our interest-free loan is helping Beechbrae social enterprise support local mental health needs despite falling income during lockdown.
Building connections during lockdown
Young people with vision impairments from across the UK are beating loneliness together thanks to an expanded series of online ‘supper clubs’ from the Royal Society for Blind Children.
A picture paints a thousand words
Our Belong partner, Beyond Words, is helping people with a learning disability and autism better understand COVID-19 by creating wordless picture stories that explain lockdown, social distancing and end-of-life.
Bringing theatre to the front room
Liverpool Playhouse is hosting its wellbeing project, Life Rooms, online to offer creative activities via Zoom.
Buddies beating loneliness in lockdown
Young people with a learning disability in Hull and East Yorkshire have been teaming up with online volunteers to beat loneliness together
Helping bereaved young people to be heard
Our belong partner, Edward’s Trust, helped Amy following the loss of her stepdad. Amy found that talking about her experience helped her and other young people going through bereavement.
‘The gift that keeps on giving’ – how young people help each other move up to secondary school
Students from Co-op Academy Stoke are helping to beat loneliness by writing songs about belonging. Work is supported through the Co-op Foundation #iwill Fund.
Abeer’s story: ‘You never know what the person next to you is going through’
Abeer helped to create Lonely Not Alone. Three months from launch day, she says we should all recognise that anyone can feel lonely.
Grangetown – a community united
Co-op Foundation awarded £80,000 to the Future Regeneration of Grangetown to help them turn a derelict building into a vibrant and sustainable community hub.
Penny’s story – beating loneliness by helping her peers
Our Lonely Not Alone research shows that 73% of young people have taken an action to help their peers beat loneliness. Penny from Whizz-Kidz is one of those young people.
Using drama to beat loneliness and build connections
Tianna, 19, is one of 22 young people who used their experiences growing up in East London to create a play that focussed on issues that mattered to them and their peers.
Disabled young people improving spaces in their community
Olly is one of 16 young people who’ve been empowered by a ‘Secret Shopper’ programme from our Belong partner KIDS to advocate for more accessible businesses and spaces across Islington, in north London.
Dewsbury young people focus on their 2020 vision
Young people from Dewsbury, in West Yorkshire, have created a toolkit that will help adults make youth activities more meaningful and youth spaces more welcoming, thanks to a grant from the Building Connections Fund Youth strand.