At our 29 January 2009 Funding Day, kindly hosted by the Brunswick Group, The Funding Network raised just over £45,000 for 5 wonderful projects.  It was very inspiring to see such generosity even in the current economic climate.

The 5 projects that presented on the evening were:

Talk About Choice: Education For Choice is the only UK charity dedicated to enabling young people to make and act on informed choices about pregnancy and abortion.  The Talk About Choice project empowers young people to make healthy informed choices, to consider the risks and benefits of different behaviours, to prevent unwanted pregnancy and to understand the complexity of making a decision about pregnancy.TFN’s grant will enable the TFC project to set up workshops for young people aged 14-19, to facilitate discussion of decision-making around pregnancy and abortion. www.efc.org.uk

Zimbabwe Health Training Support: This vital project is aiming to acquire crisis funding to support the few remaining health care professionals in Zimbabwe. As the infrastructure in Zimbabwe continues to break down, the health situation is worsening. Zimbabwe now has the lowest life expectancy in the world and an outbreak of cholera in recent weeks is killing hundreds. With the TFN grant, ZHTS aims to support the ongoing education of health professionals and students in Zimbabwe through arranging training visits. These visits serve to support staff and students in their work, increase morale and reduce the further risk of skills drain. www.zhts.org.uk

Vision Housing: Vision Housing’s basic aim is to break the cycle of re offending for long time prison service users. To do this, the project helps to provide housing and other long term support for ex-offenders prior to and on release from prison. These people are often extremely vulnerable and Vision Housing provides them with tailored packages of support, which has proven to reduce the likelihood of them re offending. The TFN grant will help Vision Housing scale up and increase their social impact, with the aim to double the number of people they help in 2009. http://visionhousing.org.uk

Zaytoun: Zaytoun is planning to launch a fairly traded Palestinian olive oil in the UK. Almost 75% of Palestinians live below the United Nations poverty line. As the economic crisis deepens, the importance of olive production to the livelihoods of many Palestinian farmers is becoming more pronounced, but they often encounter major difficulties exporting their olive oil for a fair price. The TFN grant will be used to fund a two week tour of the UK by the leading representatives of the fair trade Palestinian olive oil movement, to coincide with Fairtrade Fortnight 2009. The UK wide tour would involve visiting and giving speeches to MPs, local authorities, commercial food distributors, an olive oil tasting event, solidarity distributors, trade justice groups, UK farmers and members of the public, in order to maximise UK media coverage. www.zaytoun.org

Kings SIFE Team: This project aims to engage students in tackling the grass-root issues that hold back communities, whilst raising aspirations and creating opportunities for everyone they work with. SIFE is a network of university students, business executives and academic leaders who are all committed to making a meaningful contribution to communities around the world. SIFE’s projects are hugely varied and the impact is wide. The TFN grant is going towards core funding to facilitate the rapid expansion of the team and investing in establishing firm foundations for future years of success. A large portion of the grant (£1,500) will be put in to a microfinance pot to get new projects off the ground. http://kclsu.org/sife/