Deadline: 30-May-2024
Synergi is offering grants of £5,000 to build power and take collective action on mental health and racial justice within an abolitionist framework.
Collectively they hope to dream, build and practice being in the world they need for the liberation from carceral structures of care.
This round of funding is open to groups led by and for those racialised as Black and as people of colour, with lived experience of mental ill-health, distress, or trauma.
Purpose of the Fund
- The fund exists to support communities who are racialised and have been harmed by the mental health system, incarceration, policing, prisons, psychiatry, and forensic settings and/or the immigration system.
- They hope to support community and collective power and advance abolitionist action led by grassroots groups working towards transforming carceral systems that harm communities who are racialised as well as those groups who are building community-based alternatives to care.
- They want this funding to reach those communities experiencing the most extreme forms of discrimination or injustice, including state violence, incarceration and detention. This might include, for example, anti-Blackness, the hostile environment, anti-trans legislation or policies, Prevent or harms caused to Disabled People.
- They recognise that people who are racialised as Black or as people of colour, are not a monolith, and based on individual positionality and geographic location will experience racism in different ways.
- They know from the data that anti-Blackness is particularly prevalent within the mental health system and as a result they are radically inviting in groups led by communities who are racialised as Black and will ringfence 50% of the funding for these groups.
- They also want to counter the historic underfunding of this work. They know that groups with a high income, and those that are registered with the Charity Commission, find it easier to attract grant funding. Therefore, the fund is also open to Unregistered Groups (by which they mean groups that are not formally registered with Companies House or the Charity Commission). However, groups must have a yearly income of under £50k to be eligible to apply.
- They hope to help cultivate solidarity and build coalitions across the movement by supporting groups working together to resist and challenge harmful and oppressive systems. They will be awarding grants to groups that are engaging with an abolitionist framework, working towards transformative change over and alternatives to standard ‘service delivery’.
Examples of what they can fund:
- They have listed below some examples of what can be funded, this is only an indication and not an exhaustive list.
- Groups focusing on campaigning, such as direct action. This could include protest, work to create change on a local or national level, sharing information and skills such as community organising training, or creating resources for members of your community to better advocate for themselves. This could also include relevant research. They are aware there is less grant funding available for campaigning work, and so they encourage groups to use the fund’s flexibility in this area.
- Experimentation and dreaming – they recognise that one of the ways in which colonisation and white supremacy operate is by limiting and attacking the imaginations. By keeping them in survival mode, they are denied the time to reclaim old and dream up new ways of doing things. They want this funding to support doing things differently, this might look like time for visioning, piloting new ideas and sometimes learning from the stormy times / the “failures”.
- Organisational development – this could include training and development, tech subscriptions or equipment, reflective practice or coaching, or business planning. Anything needed to help you increase the resilience and sustainability of your group.
- Costs to deliver your support and activities – this could include staff or freelance costs, rent for space or room hire, materials for your activities (art supplies etc.), equipment, and volunteer and group member expenses. This isn’t an exhaustive list, and you may have other needs!
- Innovative ideas for coalition and movement building engaging a broad cross-section of grassroots communities and activists who are racialised to mobilise and amplify organising at the intersection of racial justice and mental health. This could include anything from skill sharing, connecting with, and unarchiving movement history, to collaborative joint actions.
- For example, you might be:
- A peer led crisis support service that draws on somatic and decolonial healing practices.
- A group building collective power and challenging racial and mental health injustices in your local community
- A mutual aid collective practicing de-escalation and transformative conflict resolution in movement spaces
- A group campaigning around the UK Government Disability Action Plan.
Eligibility Criteria
- To be eligible to apply for funding you must meet all of the following criteria:
- Your group will be based in England.
- Your group will be led by people racialised as Black or PoC that are based in England and who live with mental ill-health, trauma (including racial trauma), and distress.
- Your group will benefit people, service users/survivors and communities who have been impacted by, or work on, one or more of the following areas:
- Prisons and policing (including forensic mental health settings)
- Have lived experience of mental health settings
- Been impacted by immigration detention and removal centres
- Working at the intersection of mental ill health, distress &/trauma and racial and or disability justice using an abolitionist framework
- Your group engages in abolitionist activity:
- Tackling the root causes of mental ill-health, trauma, and distress for communities of colour, through campaigning, community organising, change-making;
- And/or by building radical community-based alternatives to healing, mental health and wellbeing.
- And/or ‘non-reformist’ reforms of current statutory state services as a stepping stone towards an abolitionary approach. For example, scrapping programmes that target specific communities e.g. Prevent.
- Your group is interested in coalition building across the grassroots racial justice and mental health and or disability movement.
- Your group has a yearly income of under £50k.
- Groups which have some white members and/or members without experience of mental ill-health are still eligible, provided those members are neither the main decision-makers nor the main people who benefit.
- They want this funding to reach those communities experiencing the most extreme forms of discrimination or injustice, including state violence. This might include, for example, the hostile environment, anti-trans legislation or policies, or Prevent. They want this funding to help you build community, and to resist and challenge. They want to counter the historic underfunding of this work.
- In this context, they encourage applications from:
- Groups led by and for people from disabled communities
- Groups led by and for people from Muslim communities
- Groups led by and for trans and non-binary communities
- Groups led by and for refugees and/or people seeking asylum
- Groups with non-traditional structures (including those that are unregistered)
Ineligible
- Organisations that pay profits to shareholders or members, whilst they are open to groups that carry out income generating activities, any profits made should be reinvested back into group activities.
- Groups operating solely outside of England
- Applications from individuals, including sole traders, that are not working to deliver a collective group project/activity
- Retrospective costs – things which have already happened in the past
- Professional Development programmes for mental healthcare professionals
- Groups where the key decisions are not made by Black People and People of Colour with lived experience of mental ill-health, trauma, and distress.
- Mental Health First Aid training and groups that only provide clinical western healing modalities such as CBT
- Groups which express hateful sentiments, for example anti-Blackness, sexism, ableism, sanism, queer or transphobia, xenophobia, or Islamophobia.
For more information, visit Synergi.