List of successful bidders for Small Grants Fund 2025-26
| Organisation Name | Purpose for Funding | Amount Funded (£) |
|---|---|---|
| 22nd Reading St Johns Scout group | To establish a year-round youth archery range providing the opportunity for young people from the Reading community of ages 4-18 (+ adult volunteers), irrespective of physical or mental ability to experience archery for the first time as well as providing the opportunity for skills to be developed by those who wish to take their participation in the sport further. | £2,038.98 |
| 89th Reading Scouts | WINGS contingent – taking around 30 young people to an international Scout and Guide camp in Windsor Great Park for a week of cultural enrichment, broadening horizons, and learning new skills through adventure. | £5,000.00 |
| 9th Tilehurst Guides | To take 24 girls and 5 adults from around Tilehurst to WINGS2026, an international camp in Windsor Great Park, from 25th July to 1st August 2026. The camp is expensive compared to our usual camps, and we would like to support parents in paying for it, as well as adding to our equipment. | £3,500.00 |
| Al Huda Network CIC | Community based project with the aim of strengthening community ties and relationships locally. To organise regular weekly initiatives as well as annual residential trips and aim to expand our offering. | £5,000.00 |
| Amber Bee CIC | To purchase project materials which will allow 470 children and approximately 705 adults to participate on the project. | £3,055.00 |
| Angels Outreach CIC | The funding will support While You Can, a community wellbeing project by Angels Outreach CIC that promotes Advance Care Planning (ACP) as a key aspect of mental and emotional wellbeing in Reading. Many residents particularly those from ethnically diverse communities find it difficult to talk about illness, dying, and future care. This often leads to anxiety, family conflict, and emotional distress when health crises occur. | £5,000.00 |
| Baker Street Area Neighbourhood Association (BSANA) | To deliver Building Bonds – A Year of Community Events with BSANA, a programme designed to strengthen connections and wellbeing within the Baker Street area, where residents experience higher levels of deprivation and limited access to shared community spaces. | £1,840.00 |
| Barbados Friends-Association | Bringing together different communities this event will host live choirs and individual performers. The main target audiences are the Barbadian and wider West Indian communities alongside any others who enjoy the sounds of the Caribbean. | £1,500.00 |
| Becalm Foundation | To support neurodivergent young people by delivering a board game club within Reading. The club will aim to help neurodivergent YP make friends, help with social and life skills and form an identity. | £5,000.00 |
| Career Horizons 360 Employment CIC | Deliver a 12-week micro-pilot to engage residents furthest from work in Reading, provide practical job-readiness workshops, fast employer brokerage & supported starts. Focus on claimants (including 18–24s) in wards with higher need. Outputs: 60 engaged → 40 completions → 25 interview-ready. | £4,995.00 |
| Chattertots | To provide expert educational consultancy visits to Reading schools supporting children with Down Syndrome, ensuring teachers understand the specific learning profile and can deliver effective, evidence-based teaching strategies that enable inclusion and academic progress. | £5,000.00 |
| Childfree in Reading | Building Belonging: Childfree in Reading to reduce loneliness and increase community connection among adults without children in Reading by funding inclusive meetups, volunteer support, and sustainable coordination for our growing social group. | £4,906.00 |
| Gabriels Wellbeing & Education CIC | To provide a specialist training package for primary schools to set up and run outdoor learning and play opportunities that support staff professional development and nurture children’s social and emotional skills and mental health | £5,000.00 |
| Project Salama | Chai, Chat and Play is a community-led wellbeing and empowerment programme designed by Project Salama to support survivors of domestic abuse, particularly women from refugee, migrant, and minority backgrounds, along with their young children. The programme combines trauma-informed peer support, social connection, and early years play in a culturally sensitive and inclusive environment | £5,000.00 |
| Rank & File Theatre | To support Sanctuary Voices, a new community theatre programme that brings together refugees, asylum seekers, survivors of abuse, disabled people and other marginalised residents to explore identity, belonging and connection through creative collaboration. The project addresses local need by tackling isolation, language barriers and limited access to inclusive, skills-based activities among disadvantaged Reading residents. | £4,800.00 |
| Reading Cancer Champions Support Group | Spreading well-informed cancer awareness among minority ethnic groups, in particular where language may be a barrier to understanding prevention and to accessing timely diagnosis and treatment, also supporting referred cancer patients; all using trained volunteers from the same groups. Extending to wider health promotion. Reading-wide scope but existing beneficiaries live mostly in South and East Reading. | £1,670.00 |
| Reading Green Wellbeing Network | The funding will be used to engage a Green Engagement Worker who will attend 80 hours’ of public events over a 12 month period, to engage with the public in person. | £2,500.00 |
| Reading Male Voice Choir | To raise awareness among young people to develop and further their interest and expertise in music generally and singing in particular. To encourage young people in their musical ambitions help develop confidence and expertise in terms of young peoples’ musical talents provide a public platform to display. | £2,500.00 |
| Reading Sudanese Community | To strengthen social inclusion and wellbeing among Sudanese refugees and new migrants in Reading through Ramadan community Iftars, youth awareness workshops, and psychosocial family support sessions. | £5,000.00 |
| Saving Generations Foundation | Saving Generations Foundation supports vulnerable communities, focusing on refugees and asylum seekers. We empower participants through practical skills like cooking with surplus food, promoting nutrition, sustainability, confidence, and social inclusion, while fostering community integration and pathways to employment or volunteering opportunities. | £5,000.00 |
| The RAFT Club (Reading Autism Families Together) | To increase provision to support more families with an AS diagnosis in the Reading borough and to employ 6 x Play Workers to support autistic children who struggle to access mainstream play settings due to their neurodivergent traits and challenging behaviour. In parallel with the play club we provide a support group/ respite for the parents/carers. | £2,850.00 |
| The Rising Sun Arts Centre | Zap Magazine 8. Magazine produced by a collaboration of groups of people with learning disabilities for over 20 years. Initially a what’s on guide for young people being moved on from youth provision it has become a glossy full colour magazine containing news, articles, reviews, and information for people with learning disabilities in the town. It aims to encourage people to be active and healthy | £4,660.00 |
| **Graft Thames Valley | To empowers neurodivergent young people (aged 19–25) in Reading to build confidence, develop practical employment skills, and move successfully into meaningful paid work. Through tailored workshops, supported work experience, and outreach with schools, colleges and careers events, the project bridges the gap between education and employment, helping young people who might otherwise be excluded from Reading’s economic success. | £4,962.00 |
| **Green Ways | To extend the opening hours of our successful community ‘Waste Not’ Free Shop which receives unwanted items and makes them available free of charge to the community. Our unit is open 2 days a week and we support around 1500 people a year with clients coming from across Reading to choose items free of charge. | £4,620.00 |
| **Nail It DIY CIC | To equip Nail It DIY CIC with the essential portable tools and safety equipment required to deliver 12 months of women only DIY workshops. Funding will enable us to provide two free of charge workshops for a total of 24 women across Reading’s most deprived wards. In addition, we will provide 2 subsidised places for every 10 standard places. The free and subsidised places would be via community referral from established, local organisations. | £4,635.00 |
| **Torch Help Hub | To improve the diet of local residents who use the food Pantries in Coley and Southcote, by coaching them in new cooking skills in a relaxed community setting. This will enable them to make good choices and equip them with new skills so that they can prepare food for their families using the fresh produce and food types normally available at the Pantries. | £5,000.00 |
| **Radically Hopeful | Funding will establish coordination infrastructure for IER in support of Reading’s food-growing communities by testing sustainable governance and support services through creative engagement. Three years of research shows initiatives in areas of greatest need operate in isolation, unable to share knowledge effectively or speak collectively to influence policy. | £5,000.00 |
| **Reading Bike Hub | The project will help provide people with skills they can use to get employment and enable us to provide more affordable bikes to the community. If funded, we aim to run 20 days with trained mechanics where volunteers will be given a bike to work on to learn skills. | £5,000.00 |
| **Real Time Video | The Making Places project will connect young people and older residents from Whitley Wood, South Reading, and Norcot. The project has been designed to meet a number of local needs. Providing creative community development work in the most deprived wards in Reading. Reconnecting young people with their communities and offering meaningful real world work experience. | £4,860.00 |
| **The Engine Room | The Creative Kitchen is a community project led by The Engine Room on Dee Park Estate, Reading. It blends high-quality arts sessions with shared meal preparation, creating a safe, inclusive space for adults facing mental health challenges to connect, express themselves, and build wellbeing and community through creativity and food. | £5,000.00 |
| N/A | Total | £124,891.98 |
**Notes: These organisations were funded from Household Support budgets.
Last updated on 17/04/2026
List of successful bidders for Small Grants Fund 2025-26