Scottish Refugee Council is delighted to announce two new grant-making and training schemes to support refugee-led and refugee-assisting organisations in Scotland.
Refugee-led and third sector organisations continue to play an essential and significant role in supporting refugees, asylum seekers, people with No Recourse to Public Funds and the communities in which they live through the challenges of Covid 19.
However, many organisations face current and future difficulties of their own in sustaining their support and delivering their services digitally.
Scottish Refugee Council’s Communities Team has a long-term goal to improve the resilience of refugee-led communities and refugee supporting organisations in Scotland by providing capacity building training on a range of topics.
Most recently, this has included training on writing funding proposals which led directly to refugee-led community groups securing funding, who had previously been unsuccessful, to provide essential practical support to people in their communities.
By improving resilience we mean that groups and organisations have the capability and capacity to:
- successfully apply for funds to support the services they provide to their communities;
- successfully deliver their funded projects and services openly and transparently; and
- evolve their services to meet future needs, constraints and requirements.
Our recent research, published in September 2020, gathered feedback from community groups and organisations supporting refugees about the impact of the restrictions imposed to control the spread of Covid 19 and the likely consequences these will have on service provision in the future.
The majority of groups highlighted that the main challenges ahead were continued access to funding, the evolution of their services and access to digital technology for both their organisations and their community members.
In light of this, Scottish Refugee Council is pleased to announce that we have secured additional funding from Foundation Scotland and the CORRA Foundation to create a programme of capacity building training to improve community resilience linked to a competitive grant scheme (Scheme 1 – now closed). This Scheme will provide a maximum of 30 refugee-led groups with a grant of up to £5,000 to enhance their digital service delivery.
Whilst most refugee-led groups are situated in Glasgow, there are many refugees and refugee families supported by third sector organisations across Scotland. To enhance digital support to these refugee families and improve their connectivity, inclusion, and integration, we will be running another competitive Small Grant Scheme for refugee-assisting organisations (Scheme 2).
This Scheme, for refugee-assisting supporting organisations will provide grants up to £5,000 for a minimum 40 groups.
Jewels Lang, Communities Manager, Scottish Refugee Council said: “Refugee-led and third sector organisations have been an essential practical and emotional lifeline to refugees in our communities across Scotland, many of whom were already isolated or excluded before the pandemic. Whilst we are still in the midst of COVID-19 restrictions and this important support continues, we hope that these new schemes will provide much-needed funding and training to groups to build resilience and equip them to continue to play a central role in the future to supporting refugee integration in Scotland.”
Further details for both Schemes are available below – please read all documents before applying.
Scheme 1 – for refugee-led groups (now closed)
To be included in this Scheme you must be a Refugee-led community group with an income of less than £25,000 in the last financial year.
In order to gauge the interest in this scheme and complete our training plans, we are asking refugee-led groups who meet the inclusion criteria to complete an ‘Expression of Interest’. This expression will also document your group’s commitment to participate in the training programmes.
The ‘Expression of Interest’ for Scheme 1 and associated guidelines document are below. If you wish to participate and can fulfil the requirements set out above please complete the form and email it to smallgrants@scottishrefugeecouncil.org.uk before 23:59hrs on Sunday 13th December 2020.
Expression of Interest Guidelines
Scheme 2 – for refugee-assisting organisations
To be included in this Scheme you must be a qualifying refugee assisting organisation supporting refugees, asylum seekers, people with No Recourse to Public Funds and their communities across Scotland.
This Scheme will provide funding for refugee-assisting groups and organisations to enhance their service delivery by improving either their internal digital capability and/or that of their services users. The funding is to enable a rapid intervention which can be achieved and evaluated by the end of June 2021. If you wish to participate and can fulfil the requirements set out in Scheme 2 please complete the form and email it to smallgrants@scottishrefugeecouncil.org.uk before 23:59hrs on Sunday 17th January 2021.
