Young Barnet Foundation’s Space2Grow Children & Young People’s Fund has been awarding grants to local community and voluntary groups since 2017 to support their work in providing vital services and opportunities for the borough’s 0-25-year-olds.
To date, £280,000 has been awarded just to fund free BACE Holidays placements for children and young people in receipt of free school meals. Launched last year, BACE Holidays offers free activities with food during the school holidays. The scheme is run in partnership between Young Barnet Foundation and Barnet Council and is paid for by the Department for Education as part of the national Holiday Activities with Food (HAF) programme.
The scheme has an emphasis on wellbeing and development support by providing engaging and enriching activities alongside nutritional education and a hot, healthy meal. School holidays can be a challenging time for struggling families and the scheme ensures that children continue to receive a healthy cooked meal to support their physical and cognitive development while helping to reduce food insecurity and obesity. So far, a total of 10,736 daily places have been used by children and young people across Barnet in programmes delivered thanks to Space2Grow funding
The funding has provided children and young people with opportunities to participate in a wide range of free activities, from creative arts, drama and dance to basketball, fencing and kayaking. Space2Grow funding also enabled groups to supplement this activity with fun excursions and trips to theatres, museums and zoos. The scheme has proved so successful that funded has been committed for a further three years.
Here’s what some attendees had to say about their experience:
“I really like it because there’s lots of fun activities and you get to see your friends and there’s good food!”
“If I wasn’t here, I would probably be at home doing nothing or playing PlayStation so it was really nice to come out and play basketball and meet new people.”
“We grew some peas, we got to stroke the chickens and we did some whittling. It was really cool because during coronavirus it has been kind of hard to get out somewhere.
You can help create more opportunities for the borough’s disadvantaged children and young people by donating to the Space2Grow Children & Young People’s Fund at youngbarnetfoundation.org.uk/donate
