Each month, our Trustees come together to award grants from our two core funds. The 'Stronger Communities Fund' (SCF), where we seek applications from community groups looking to make a difference in their area, and the 'Manchester's Rising Stars Fund' where we award grants supporting ambitious young Mancunians.
September 2023 was a bumper month, we awarded 11 SCF grants totalling a whopping £33,877! Here is the full list of those fantastic local initiatives, and we look forward to sharing further details about them with you as the projects develop.
Project: ‘Squash from the Mosque’, a weekly squash and social session for women and girls in South Manchester’s Muslim community. We’re funding this for a full year starting October 2023. As their name suggests, they started in Yorkshire and we’re delighted that our funding will bring their unique approach to Manchester for the first time.
Award: £1,560
Location: sessions taking place in Didsbury, in partnership with Salahadeen Al-Ayubi mosque in Fallowfield.
Project: Weekly inclusive basketball sessions at the National Basketball Performance Centre, home of the Manchester Eagles.
Award: £2,408
Location: Longsight.
A massive thank you to We Love MCR for their support! This funding is vital to keep our Manchester Eagles inclusive basketball sessions running, and this guarantees us the season ahead without worrying about covering costs. Our members love coming to our sessions and playing basketball every week in a welcoming and friendly environment!
Tin Pan Alley
Project: the upkeep of a community alleyway, shared and lovingly maintained by two residential streets for 11 years.
Award: £860
Location: Harpurhey
I wish to thank everyone at We Love MCR on behalf of the residents of Tin Pan Alley for the help and support that we have received from you. It will help us to maintain the standard of work we are able to do in the future and keep the alley way improving for the residents. It will improve the environment for wildlife like birds, bees, butterflies and hedgehogs, and give residents the chance to start gardening, grow the plants of their choice, or just sit outside and enjoy the gardens.
Project: Supporting their long-standing work with the Chinese and South-East Asian community in Manchester by developing their tailored English communication and literacy classes, especially around health messaging.
Award: £4,000
Location: City-centre
A heartfelt thank you for We Love MCR's funding. The impact of the pandemic has been catastrophic to our income and without this fund we could not offer English classes for our Chinese residents. Thanks to this fund we will be able to offer a culturally inclusive environment for older people to learn and socialise to expand understanding of the English language and health... enabling us to upskill our volunteers to provide better services through TEFL courses... helping us further our mission to improve health and wellbeing, and tackle inequalities!
Project: A new drop-in session, building on their existing work, for people experiencing isolation and adverse mental health as a result in the local area.
Award: £2,860
Location: Ardwick
Project: 6 months of funding for their ‘Eat, Meet and Greet’ sessions, where locals can come together and cook meals led by a community cook!
Award: £3,480
Location: Burnage
Project: Funding their 'Luncheon Club' project for 7 months and expanding their capacity - a weekly gathering for locals of all backgrounds and ages to mingle and enjoy a hot meal together.
Award: £3,920
Location: Longsight
We would like to express our heartfelt gratitude for providing us with a grant that can help residents in Manchester improve their social, physical, and mental well-being through a good hearty hot meal at our Luncheon Club... We are grateful to be able to be able to continue providing for our community and make a difference to people’s lives with support from We Love MCR.
Project: 'Flavour Your Future' project - aimed at parents/carers of 0–4-year-olds to learn new skills around affordable, healthy cooking, and supporting them to access healthy start vouchers and access take home information over October - December 2023.
Award: £3,869
Location: Charlestown
Project: Aiming to reduce the feeling of isolation that LGBT+ families across Manchester can experience in parenthood, with 12 months of sessions covering education, bonding, and much more.
Award: £2,920
Location: City-wide
"We want to say a huge thank you to We Love MCR for their generous support and funding, enabling us to deliver monthly activities for LGBT+ parents/carers and their children during our Saturday sessions. These invaluable meet ups not only reduce isolation but also authentically represent and empower our more marginalised families. Together, we are ensuring a stronger, more inclusive community"
And finally, the two final grants our Trustees approved in this round of awards are part of match-funding efforts, and dependent on other funders. We will confirm in due course if these are successful beyond our funding:
Project: part of a match-funding project called 'Babies Need Books!', where they want to continue their aim of promoting early years education with free reading books to under-5's by expanding their incredible work from just Gorton to other much-needed areas of Manchester in 2024.
Award: £4,000
Location: City-wide
Project: Part of a match-funding effort to install environmentally friendly facilities on a very active allotment in the local community.
Award: £4,000
Location: Chorlton
