Deadline: 12-May-23
The Katharine Howard Foundation (KHF) is seeking applications for its ‘Children’s Promise’ Grants Programme to support community-based organisations working with young children and their families in disadvantaged areas, who may not reach their potential due to the corrosive impact of poverty.
Aims
- This is necessary because despite Ireland being a prosperous, developed country, an estimated 89,288 children live in consistent poverty. All children are born with the potential to thrive and the ‘Children’s Promise’ grants programme aims to support community-based organisations working to protect that potential and to support the wellbeing of their families.
- The ‘Children’s Promise’ grants programme is a promise from KHF to provide financial and other supports to selected organisations, to support and develop the potential of the children engaged with the organisations. The ‘Children’s Promise’ grants programme aims to build on the powerful work taking place at community-level to address child poverty with a grants programme of €1,000,000 in financial and non-financial supports over the duration of the programme 2023-27.
Priorities
- This grants programme focuses on ‘promising projects and practices’ within community-based organisations, which aim to prevent or intervene at an early stage in addressing the potential impact of poverty on young children and their families. It encourages applications from small, collaborative projects that focus on gaps in provision and innovative approaches to addressing these gaps.
- Applications are particularly welcome from rural and urban organisations supporting disadvantaged groups such as Lone Parent families, Traveller families, families of prisoners, families of people suffering with addictions, Migrants and Asylum Seekers, displaced and homeless families, and families who have been affected by domestic and genderbased violence or other issues.
- While there is no one ‘magic bullet’ to address the impact of poverty on children and families, they know that a number of factors can mitigate and positively support families and therefore children. They know that interventions that:
- Support parents from the earliest stage possible, preferably during pregnancy, can have greater impacts.
- Support and enhance parent child relationships and responsive parenting, through relational working, are essential in promoting better outcomes for children.
- Help ameliorate the impact of stress experienced by families through a range of either concrete and practical supports or more emotional and psychological supports lay the foundations for positive child outcomes.
- Promising projects or practices that draw from the above principles and are supported by evidence can make a difference to the lives of children and their families. Many such projects and practices have been developed at the community level and are led by community and voluntary organisations, often with limited funding or resources.
Categories
The ‘Children’s Promise’ grants programme will support organisations in the following categories:
- Early years / young children projects, within community-based settings. These projects may also include children of primary school age.
- Parental support programmes.
- Research into promising programmes or gaps in provision that may help to build policy support in those areas.
- Capacity building within your organisation (focused on young children aged 0-5), which may focus on creating an enabling environment for policy change, strengthening leadership capacity, strengthening your evidence-base or improving your standards of practice.
Funding Information
- The ‘Children’s Promise’ grants programme offers grants of up to €45,000 (€15,000 per annum over a three-year period) to small, not-for-profit organisations with an annual turnover of less than €2,000,000. Each of the years 2023-2025, approximately four projects will be selected for multiyear support and six projects will be offered once-off support (of between €5,000 and €10,000).
- The following categories of grants will be offered:
- €5,000 (once-off support in one year, with the option of additional non-financial supports).
- €10,000 (once-off support in one year, with the option of additional non-financial supports).
- Between €10,000 and €15,000 per annum (maximum of 3-year support and additional nonfinancial supports).
- Organisations may apply for either a one-year grant of a minimum of €5,000 to a maximum of €10,000 or a multi-year grant of €15,000 per annum up to a maximum of three years. Organisations that apply for a one-year grant this year, may apply for another one-year grant or a multi-year grant next year.
Why Apply?
- The KHF ‘Children’s Promise’ grants programme will provide financial support and a network of supports for grantees. KHF aims to partner with grantee organisations so that they can work towards the shared vision of making Ireland a place in which all children can thrive, regardless of socioeconomic background.
- They also expect it will provide valuable opportunities to work collaboratively with other funders and statutory organisations. Most importantly, they hope it will have tangible impact on the lives of vulnerable young children and their families and make your organisations and communities even stronger.
Eligible Projects
Eligible projects/programmes will:
- Support young children ages 0-5 and may include children up to 12 years of age, their parents (or guardians) and be from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds.
- Address essential needs, creativity and play, education, or improved health and wellbeing for young children and their parents.
- Be a new project or a promising current project that requires additional funding.
- Use the funding for project costs such as staffing, planning, events, courses or for operational costs such as minor refurbishment, day-to-day running costs (which may have increased).
Eligibility Criteria
Eligible organisations will:
- Be a child or family-focused, community-based organisation working at local level.
- Be a registered charity – or apply in collaboration with a ‘Lead partner’ that is a registered charity.
- Have an annual income of less than €2,000,000.
- Have up to date and sufficient governing documents, annual accounts and child safeguarding policies.
For more information, visit Katharine Howard Foundation (KHF).
