2023 Community Vitality Grants Leave No-one Behind
2023 Community Vitality Grants Leave No-one Behind
Over $1.1million of grants have been handed out to five organizations in and around London this year as part of the Community Vitality Grants Program, for projects that embrace equity and sustainability.
Thanks to generous unrestricted gifts and donations to the Community Fund, London Community Foundation has granted over $1.1million to five organizations running projects that embrace equity and sustainability through our Community Vitality Grants Program. This program supports high-impact, innovative, and collaborative initiatives that tackle issues identified in the Foundation’s Vital Signs report.
The chosen organizations and the projects they’re running are:
London Environmental Network – Nonprofit Resiliency Retrofits
Sakeenah – London & Middlesex Area Shelter and Remote Services Program
Thames Talbot Land Trust – Community-led Land Protection for a Sustainable Future
Unity Project – Transforming Unity Project with Pallet Shelters
Community Vitality Grant recipients are chosen through a months-long deliberation process in which a panel of community volunteers review project proposals put forward by local agencies. Successful projects must represent true partnerships, demonstrate commitment to collaboration, leverage new or existing funding resources and tackle a need identified in LCF’s Vital Signs report.
In the past few years, LCF’s granting has focused primarily on social issues that were exacerbated during the pandemic. This year, recognizing the ongoing need to help tackle the issues facing the environment, the Community Vitality Grant Program was also opened up to environmental grants following the Environment being featured in the 2022 Vital Signs Report for the first time.
Donors choose to support LCF’s unrestricted Community Fund because they trust LCFs expertise in knowing where the funds will have the greatest impact. This allows the Foundation to be agile in responding to emerging needs in the community.
The power of unrestricted granting means that this years Community Vitality Grants can tackle a range of issues, including providing hands-on housing construction programs to Indigenous youth, supporting permanent housing solutions for some of London’s most vulnerable homeless people, funding mental health services, and helping address food security.
More about the recipients and their projects
-
In 2022, LEN launched the Nonprofit Resiliency Project (NRP) to support low-income nonprofit organizations in London and Middlesex that provide housing for vulnerable populations. By collaborating with nine such organizations, the project aims to implement sustainable retrofits across the 26 multi-unit residential buildings owned by these organizations, transforming them into more efficient, comfortable, and resilient spaces, ultimately achieving net-zero emissions.
Grant: $200,000 for 2 years
-
Sakeenah was founded in 2018 from a vision of a society where everyone has safety, serenity, and strength. In London, Sakeenah has provided shelter along with essential support and services to women and children since it opened in February 2021. The Community Vitality grant will support Sakeenah in providing sheltering in its London home and remote casework services for women from diverse cultural, racial, and religious backgrounds who require safety and support.
Grant: $245,593 for 2 years
-
Strong Start provides programs and services aimed at helping children learn to read and acquire essential early literacy skills. One of their notable initiatives, the Letters, Sounds, and Words program, supports one-on-one instruction for children who require additional practice with reading fundamentals, catering to their unique learning needs and individual challenges. This grant will enable Strong Start to make necessary changes to ensure that the program materials are more inclusive and representative of the diverse children, volunteers, and school communities.
Grant: $65,000 for 2 years
-
Along with ten environmental partners Thames Talbot Land Trust are reaching out to landowners across Elgin, Middlesex, Oxford, and Perth Counties with a mission to work with local communities to protect, conserve, and restore nature and food production systems through Conservation Easement Agreements.
Grant: $325,000 for 3 years
-
This funding will enable them to maximize their emergency shelter's capacity by creating an all-gender inclusive shelter with exterior pallet shelter cabins and interior retrofits. Additionally, the grant will support an evaluation that aims to assess the effectiveness of the pallet cabins as a solution for rapid, safe, and accessible emergency shelter. The findings from this evaluation will have significant implications for the development of homeless prevention systems and services, both locally and internationally.
Grant: $270,000 for 3 years