The East of England Co-op Community Cares Fund aims to support the work of voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations (VCSE) that are creating or adapting services or activities that will have a positive impact in the communities where the East of England Co-operative trades in Norfolk, Suffolk and North East Essex.
Funding applications
Applications for the next round of the Community Cares Fund are now open!
Funding applications must address at least one or more of these key areas:
Community Action – including the development of physical and virtual spaces, and services that bring communities together.
Mental Health and Wellbeing
Food Justice for all – including access to, and sharing knowledge about good quality, nutritious food.
Who can apply and size of grants
Please ensure you read the information below before completing our eligibility checker
The Fund will award grants of between £1000 and £5000 to support the work of voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations (VCSE), charities and parish councils looking to create or adapt services or activities to address local needs in the areas of Norfolk, Suffolk and North East Essex where the East of England Co-op trades.
To find out where your nearest East of England Co-op food store, travel branch or funeral branch is click here to go to our store locator. Select the option for ‘All branches’
Applicants to the East of England Co-op Community Cares Fund will need to have:
a management committee of at least three members
a governing document/constitution with a dissolution clause
a bank account with two unrelated signatories living at separate addresses, who must both sign for all withdrawals
an equal opportunities policy
annual accounts
management accounts (if your accounts are less than six months old) which show income, expenditure, reserves (split by restricted and unrestricted)
relevant safeguarding policies if you are working with young people or vulnerable adults.
The East of England Co-op Community Cares Fund is administered on our behalf by Suffolk Community Foundation working with Essex and Norfolk Community Foundations.
By applying to the East of England Co-op Community Cares Fund you agree to share your data with the East of England Co-op and the Community Foundations and understand that you may be contacted for publicity purposes.
The window for applications for this round closes on Friday 8 October 2021. Please note funds are limited for this round, and the Fund is likely to close early if oversubscribed.
Funds from this round will be awarded at the start of 2022.
Successful applicants will be required to take part in marketing activities with us to promote the East of East Co-op Community Cares Fund and the work the group is undertaking in the community.
If you would like to apply for a Community Cares Fund grant, please complete our Eligibility Checker. It will only take a couple of minutes.
The Community Cares Fund was set up in April 2020, as a response to the Coronavirus pandemic and our desire to allocate our community funds to charities and organisations looking to adapt, enhance and deliver much needed services to the most vulnerable in our communities during this incredibly difficult time.
Our initial Fund of £230,000 was quickly added to by our generous members who donated their dividend to the fund.
With the support of our members we were able to support foodbanks helping families at crisis point, young victims of domestic violence, unpaid carers struggling in lockdown and vulnerable people shielding at home to get the medical supplies they needed.
A number of smaller but no less valuable donations were also made to a variety of groups and charities across our region.
Over the past year, the Community Cares Fund has enabled us to be much more responsive to the needs of people in our communities and direct our support to where it is most needed. To allow us to continue this good work, we have decided to direct the majority of our community support though the Community Cares Fund and working with the Community Foundations in Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk to open it up for charities and groups to apply for grants of between £1000 and £5000.
The fund brings together global experts to show how tech companies can implement end-to-end encryption without opening the door to greater levels of child sexual abuse.
Home Secretary Priti Patel will today (8 September) tell social media companies that they must take our children’s safety as seriously as they do their bottom line at a meeting of the G7 interior ministers.
She will also call on G7 partners to back the UK approach in holding the internet technology giants to account if harmful content continues to be posted across their platforms and if they neglect public safety when designing their products.
An interactive session for anyone who works with low income families or individuals, to help identify, understand and address fuel poverty.
About this event
With increased domestic fuel costs, and unprecedented volatility in the energy market, people on low incomes, including pensioners, people with disabilities and families, face unprecedented challenges keeping their homes warm, dry and conducive to health.
As a frontline worker or a volunteer you may spot the signs but feel powerless to address your service users underlying situation.
But there are things you can do. This is not only, if at all, about encouraging people to switch supplier. That can bring benefits but too often, fuel-poor consumers don’t have ready access to the full benefits of the competitive energy market.
Rather, nudging the people you help towards changes in the way they use energy and conserve it AND making sure they can access the high-quality, intensive energy advice the Citizens Advice service in Essex offers is the way to go. Our services seek to tackle some of the underlying causes of fuel poverty – not just “hard to heat” homes, but also low incomes, issues with benefits and debt.
In this FREE course, delivered by Citizens Advice energy experts, you’ll learn:
What is fuel poverty
What are the causes and effects
Who is most vulnerable
Practical steps your service user can take
Grants and schemes available to improve energy efficiency
The vital role income maximisation plays and how we help
Other ways Citizens Advice can help and how to refer
The Faith New Deal Pilot Fund is a new, competitive grant programme to help support faith-based organisations to use their resources effectively within their community and to build trust between national government, local government and faith groups.
Government wants to recognise the role faith-based organisations play in the resilience of our communities and the importance of local faith groups working collaboratively to respond to societal issues.
Active Essex are pleased to host the free, online Essex Health Series. The aim of these seminars is to provide anyone who delivers sport or physical activity with the latest information on ways to support people recovering from Covid-19, how this has impacted on those most vulnerable and opportunities for the Sport, Physical Activity and Leisure sector to support residents of Essex.
This is a very unique seminar that aims to develop the knowledge and understanding of common types of cancer but more specifically the types of treatments people may go through. We explore how these treatments can affect the body and how physical activity and exercise can help make the journey through treatment and post treatment, more manageable and positive. This condition is exceptionally complex; therefore, the session focuses on how we as coaches, health and fitness professionals can make a person’s everyday life more enjoyable and maintain independence.
By the end of the seminar, you should feel confident and competent to plan and adapt existing exercise sessions for individuals living with, or recovering from, cancer, promoting greater inclusivity.
Proposed government reforms to UK data protection standards could change how charities are able to contact supporters and beneficiaries.
The Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport has launched a consultation on plans to reform some of the key elements of the General Data Protection Regulation, such as its data processing principles, its data rights for citizens, and its mechanisms for supervision and enforcement.
The government says its proposals aim to deliver an “even better” data protection regime that will support vibrant competition and innovation to drive economic growth.
The proposals would affect how charities can use emails, text and video messages for direct marketing purposes.
Businesses are able to contact individuals who have previously been in touch during a sale or transaction, providing they have not refused or opted out of receiving marketing communications about similar products.
This is known as a “soft opt-in” that aims to strike a balance between people’s data protection rights and legitimate business activity.
Organisations that rely on this approach must also give individuals a chance to opt out in every subsequent communication and the process must be simple – for example, with a clear ‘Unsubscribe’ link.
But there is no equivalent provision for charities to engage in direct marketing in this way.
The government is therefore proposing to extend this “soft opt-in” to electronic communications to organisations other than commercial companies, where they have previously formed a relationship with a person – perhaps through membership or subscription.
Giselle Cory, executive director of DataKind UK, said: “It is crucial that any reform to data protection puts individual rights and privacy front and centre, and that any changes are communicated clearly.
“The GDPR was a positive step forward for the data rights of individuals, and that should not be eroded.
“With the introduction of the GDPR, many charities struggled to interpret the law, and some felt paralysed by uncertainty and fear of stepping outside the law by accident.
“There is so much potential for the use of data to inform decision-making within charities – and ultimately have a greater impact on the often vulnerable individuals and communities they serve.
“The government needs to be careful not to quash this potential.”
All managers should be given the skills to support employees with mental health issues, NICE and PHE have said in new guidance.
Reducing stigma and equipping managers with skills to have conversations with employees about mental health is likely to facilitate conversations that address concerns about their mental wellbeing, the guideline says.
NICE and Public Health England’s guideline on Mental Wellbeing at Work covers how to create the right conditions to support mental wellbeing at work through an environment and culture of participation, equality, safety and fairness in the workplace based on open communication.
The independent guideline committee, made up of mental health experts, employers, professionals from across the NHS, local authority members, and lay members, recommended when offering mental health training for managers, employers should consider including:
how to have a conversation about mental wellbeing with an employee
information about mental wellbeing
how to identify early warning signs of poor mental wellbeing
resources on mental wellbeing
awareness of the stigma associated with poor mental wellbeing
ongoing monitoring of mental wellbeing in the workplace
The guideline says the training should equip managers with the knowledge, tools, skills and resources to improve awareness of mental wellbeing at work. It should also improve employees’ understanding of and engagement in organisational decisions and the communication between managers and employees.
Dr Paul Chrisp, director of NICE’s centre for guidelines, said: “Even before the pandemic, the state of the nation’s mental health has been a topic of conversation at home, in the workplace and in the media.
“Our new guideline has considered issues which were a problem before COVID-19 emerged and new issues which have presented themselves as a result of the pandemic.
“Reducing stigma and equipping managers with skills to have conversations with employees about mental health is likely to facilitate conversations between managers and employees about any concerns about their mental wellbeing. This makes it more likely that managers can support employees with mental health issues.
“Further research is needed in this area, but providing managers with skills to discuss mental wellbeing improves the relationship between manager and employee so that they can identify and reduce work stressors.
“This is a practicable step employers can implement and adopted quickly without a huge amount of investment.”
The committee agreed that it was important that all line managers received training and support. They considered that this was good practice in all industries and all sizes of organisation, and that managers benefit in terms of their mental wellbeing from feeling skilled to perform their line management duties.
A Deloitte report, Mental health and employers | Refreshing the case for investment published in January 2020, estimates that poor mental health among employees costs UK employers £42bn – £45bn each year. This is made up of absence costs of around £7bn, presenteeism coming to work despite poor health and underperforming- costs ranging from about £27bn to £29bn and turnover costs of around £9bn. This is an increase of about 6bn and 16% on the figures in their our 2017 report, driven primarily by a rise in presenteeism.
The North East Essex Health and Wellbeing Alliance are hosting a virtual conference on tackling inequalities on 11th October 2-4pm.
Living through Covid for the last 18 months has highlighted a host of inequalities that we need to learn from and tackle together as a system. Our key note speaker is Sir Michael Marmot, a leading figure in the world of tackling health inequalities. Sir Michael Marmot will highlight some of the inequalities in health outcomes, particularly throughout the pandemic and how we can attempt to break down some of the barriers, together. As well as our speakers, you will also hear from some of our citizens who will share their own stories.
If you are new at applying for grant funding or just want to know a little more bout how ECF works then this is the talk for you.
About this event
This interactive webinar is an opportunity to learn more about ECF if you are thinking of applying for funding. The session will cover:
* How ECF works
* What we look for in an application
* The application journey
* Types of work we can fund
After the presentation there will be an opportunity to ask questions and an open discussion ,sharing best practise between other charitable groups on the call.
You can now check out more than books at our Libraries as we pilot the Essex Library of Things.
We now have a catalogue of items ranging from a drum set to a pressure washer available to reserve and borrow free of charge.
All you need is to be over 18 and have a Library card. You can then reserve the item and collect from one of five libraries or the mobile library service.
All items in the ‘Library of Things’ are free of charge during the pilot and include:
• DIY and gardening tools (such as a drill, pressure washer, leaf blower)
• Household appliances (such as a bread making machine, sewing machine and stand mixer)
• Musical instruments (including a drum kit, guitar and keyboards)
• Camping and sports equipment (such as a tent, gazebo and outdoor games)
Bookings will be reviewed and where appropriate, stock will be increased if there is high demand.
Items can be reserved online on the Love Essex website and collected from Chelmsford, Witham, Great Parndon, Laindon and Clacton libraries. There is also an option to use the mobile library service for collection.
Not only will the Library of Things help residents who might not have the means to rent or buy themselves, it also reduces waste.
This pilot is a collaboration between the BLUEPRINT to a Circular Economy Project and the Essex Library Services.