Latest grants news :: Grants
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As well as offering a wide-ranging programme of land-based learning for children and young people, the Ernest Cook Trust gives grants to registered charities, schools and not-for-profit organisations wishing to encourage young people’s interest either in the countryside and the environment or the arts (in the broadest sense) or aiming to raise levels of literacy and numeracy.
Since the ECT is a land-based Trust, work which encourages or ensures the continuation of rural skills and crafts is of particular interest to the Trustees. All applications are expected to link in with either the National Curriculum or with recognised qualifications.
Each year the ECT Trustees give around £1.6 million to support hundreds of educational projects throughout the UK. Click here to download a list showing a selection of recent grant recipients.
A large grants programme for awards of over £4,000 and a small grants programme for awards of under £4,000 operate throughout the year.
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Trust invests in new growth for rural skill
As the nation celebrates Her Majesty the Queen’s 60th year on the throne, at the Ernest Cook Trust we are crowning our own Diamond Jubilee year with the launch of new rural craft apprenticeships.
ECT’s Trustees have given their approval to invest £250,000 in apprenticeships in Coppicing and Green Wood Trades. This considerable investment will fund an apprenticeship with training supervised by the Small Woods Association, which supports the sustainable management of woodlands in the UK and already has a successful track record with its National Coppice Apprenticeship scheme.
Coppicing was identified as an endangered rural skill in a 2004 study Crafts in the English Countryside: Towards a Future, which was part-funded by ECT. The study found that, despite a revival in the craft of coppicing in the 1980s, there has been a shortage of new recruits in relation to the numbers retiring.
The first ‘Ernest Cook Trust Apprentice’ is expected to start training in Autumn 2012. ECT Director Nicholas Ford said: “We wanted to mark the Trust’s Diamond Jubilee by making a major investment in traditional rural skills. We chose coppicing and green wood-working as this ancient skill is in real danger of dying out.
“We look forward to working with the Small Woods Association, and we will be closely following the progress of our new apprentices over the coming years.”
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Grants News
by ECT's Grants Administrator Jose Phillips
As well as encouraging children’s love of the countryside, the environment and the arts, one major aspect of the Ernest Cook Trust’s grants programme is to help raise standards in reading, writing and maths.
Between 2008 and 2011, the Trust donated over £450,000 to 120 literacy and numeracy projects throughout the UK. As always we get regular reports about the progress of the initiatives we fund, and here are some examples:
The Right to Read programme provides volunteers to help Leicestershire primary schoolchildren improve reading. With a £7,500 grant the Leicestershire Education Business Company held training sessions, enabling 566 volunteers to help 1,698 primary children with their reading.
The company says government cuts meant it would have been unable to continue this valuable programme without ECT’s support. The Word Power! project run by the Who Cares? Trust offered creative writing and reading workshops for young people in care. Youngsters aged 12 to 19 from Essex attended workshops with the poet Lemn Sissay, and produced a piece of creative writing which was published in an anthology and recited by the young authors at a celebration event. The grant of £2,000 was “invaluable and helped make this vision a reality and make a real difference to the children and young people in care.”
A £1,210 grant to the Afghanistan and Central Asian Association supported 55 students from refugee and asylum seeker backgrounds in London who were struggling at school. As a result of the Saturday school, most of the young people increased their levels of achievement. Most of the students’ parents are studying in the ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) classes so they can participate in their children’s education and schoolwork at home.
The Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn received a £8,181 grant for its Literacy through Drama project in local primary schools which uses drama and participation to reinforce themes and topics for Key Stage 2 pupils. The children are almost all from minority ethnic groups, many at an early stage of learning English. A teacher commented: “The children had imaginary worlds created for them in a vivid way which enabled them to write thoroughly back in the classroom”.
Mordiford Primary School in rural Herefordshire achieves good results in numeracy and literacy at Key Stages 1 and 2 but numeracy standards are traditionally lower than those for literacy. A grant of £3,841 funded the school’s first ever Maths Week, a project created to make numeracy approachable, fun and even ‘cool’. The week was a tremendous success, and a great opportunity to raise the subject’s profile.
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