Member Article

The Liverpool ONE Foundation celebrates £2.5M worth of grants on Mental Health Awareness Week

Award-winning retail & leisure destination Liverpool ONE has awarded local organisations more than £240,000 worth of funding through The Liverpool ONE Foundation, managed by The Community Foundation for Merseyside (CFM)

The grants have been allocated between 10 local community organisations, spread out over the course of two years. This latest injection of funding will benefit an estimated 6,100 children, young people and families, as well as taking the total of The Liverpool ONE Foundation’s distribution to £2.5 million.

Following the fund criteria, all projects provided with grants aim to improve the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people across the Liverpool City Region.

The 2021 programme has overseen the funding of 10 local organisations including: Priority Youth Project in Liverpool, The Positivitree Ltd in Birkenhead, Footsteps 2000 Limited in St Helens, Sefton-based Ykids, and Elsie’s Moon on the Wirral.

With a recent study from the Princes Trust revealing that 50% of 16-25 year olds feel their mental health has worsened since the start of the pandemic, and 26% stating they feel ‘unable to deal with life’, awareness around the topic has never been so vital. For this reason, Liverpool ONE Foundation remains dedicated in its efforts towards charities that provide help and support to this particular age group.

This scheme previously awarded four local organisations with three-year grants, spanning from 2017-2020, including Claire House Children’s Hospice and Merseyside Arts Foundation, with funds of up to £60,000 per application. Other recipients of this funding were ADDvanced Solutions Community Network and The Comedy Trust.

Donna Howitt, Place Strategy Director at Liverpool ONE, said: “We are humbled to be able to contribute to such worthy causes that place the mental health of younger people at the heart of what they do. We look forward to continuing to nurture and support the community through The Foundation programme over the next two years, benefiting young people all across the region”

The Liverpool ONE Foundation’s previous funding recipients also include Women’s Enterprising Breakthrough, Liverpool Lighthouse, Home Start Knowsley, Yellow House, Shaftesbury Youth Club and Conquer Life CIC. Since 2009, the Foundation has donated over £2.5m to community projects, and directly benefitted approximately 375,000 people.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Sarah Jones .