£22.4k grants support Bristol community projects

Sovereign Housing Association, working with not-for-profit digital fundraising platform The Good Exchange, gave grants to Meadow Vale Community Association, arts-focused Studio Meraki and creativeShift, and the Golden-Oldies Charity.

All awarded projects had to focus on growing community impact.

The Golden-Oldies Charity, fondly known as “Goldies”, delivers fun daytime social Sing&Smile community groups, supporting health, wellbeing and independent living by combating loneliness and isolation with older adults.

Founder Grenville Jones said: “We were absolutely delighted to receive funding from Sovereign Housing via The Good Exchange. We have many plans for 2022, including relaunching many of our popular social sing-along groups that had to stop with COVID, but also to launch many more new groups across B&NES, North Somerset, Bristol, South Gloucestershire and Wiltshire.

“We look forward to working in partnership with Sovereign Housing, offering their residents opportunities for fun and friendship, engaging in local community-based activities over the coming month.”

Rachel Peters, Community Development Officer for Sovereign, commented: “Our themes were community cohesion and growth and it has been great to support so many grassroots and resident-led projects that focus on bringing people back together and will make a real impact in our communities.”

Julian May, Head of Collaborative Funding for The Good Exchange, added: “We are delighted that Sovereign was able to use The Good Exchange platform to help find, shortlist and distribute grants to a number of charities across Bristol. The focus on supporting projects that deliver impact and engagement across communities has become even more important as we move into the COVID-recovery period.