The Walcot Foundation is seeking to appoint an Honorary Adviser to the Foundation’s Grants Committee. S/he will provide advice and offer comment on grant applications.  The Adviser will also provide insight on current issues locally for community groups, charities and social enterprises and how the Foundation may best support young people and families from low-income backgrounds.
 
Person Specification 

• A minimum of five years’ experience of management within a local voluntary sector context 
• Currently part of (or recently retired from) senior leadership within a community-based charity or social enterprise  
• Experience of tackling poverty through community projects in Lambeth or neighbouring inner London borough 
• Passionate about having an impact in Lambeth at a strategic and systemic level 
• The ability to read and digest reports, easily identifying key issues 
• The ability to think and contribute objectively 
• The ability to work cooperatively with others in pursuit of our shared aims 
  

 
Terms 
This is an honorary appointment and carries no pay, save reimbursement of out-of-pocket expenses directly associated with the role.  The appointee will be expected to attend all meetings of the Grants Committee (5-6 meetings per year that take place on Wednesdays at 6.30pm in the Governors’ Boardroom at 125 Kennington Road, SE11 6SF). There will be occasional contact with the Director and Grants Manager outside the meetings.   
 
The post is advisory.  Governors are responsible for considering whether to act on any such advice.  The post holder will not be held responsible by the Governors or Foundation in any way for any action they (the Governors) may take or not take. 
 
The appointment is for one year initially.

How to Apply
Please email [email protected] with your CV and a short covering letter explaining why you are interested in this role and why you consider yourself a good fit for this role.  Also, please could you complete this Equalities Monitoring Form.

Closing Date: 10am 19 September
Interviews: Early October
First Grants Committee Meeting: 6.30pm 2 November

Please contact Daniel Chapman, Grants Manager (020 7735 1925) if you have any queries or wish to talk further about the role.

Due to the extreme weather over the next few days, we will be operating a skeleton service from the office. Staff members will still be available on the phone/by email from 9am to 5pm. We will respond to emails or telephone requests in the usual way but if you have an out of hours emergency please refer to our tenant resources page.
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The Met Office has put in place a Red warning: Extreme heat for London on Monday and Tuesday. Tenants are encouraged to follow key public health messages.

After Lucy's untimely and early death, her partner made a gift of £5000 to the Foundation in her memory. It was used to fund music therapy projects across five Lambeth nursery schools, helping children from low-income families.

"Lucy grew up on a Cheshire farm, loved the outdoors and being with animals. These factors helped her recover from a serious car accident when she was nine. Spending months in hospital wards, she learnt about the other children’s lives and became aware of her own family’s privilege. She moved to London after reading Classics at Cambridge, and lived in Lambeth in her 20s, and from 1998 until her death.

She was a housing officer on Greenwich and Lambeth estates. She completed an MSc in Social Policy & Planning at LSE and then worked at St Pancras Housing Association, now Origin HA. She had moved into housing development, and putting together Housing Corporation bids. She also worked in Ireland, laying the groundwork for Clúid, the first Irish Housing Association and the country’s first non-church social housing. By the time she left Origin, Lucy was the director of business and community development, bringing together different aspects of her interest in social change.

She retrained as a counsellor and psychotherapist. She worked with adults and& teenagers in private practice and also school counselling services. She became a counselling trainer at Re-Vision.

Lucy had a practical commitment to environmental issues, women's rights and the many other political causes she believed in. She loved being around people, valued education and had a lively interest in language, art, music, theatre. She is survived by Rasha, her partner of over 20 years."

If you wish to give money in remembrance of someone please get in touch with our Grants Manager (see contacts page).

As a Foundation, it is our privilege to support Lambeth residents studying at further/higher education and schools and organisations making a massive impact in the local community.  It is very important that our grants are provided effectively, efficiently and supportively.  To help with this, we carry out a Listening Exercise every three years to get systematic feedback from grantees on what is working well but more importantly where we can improve our systems and our service.
 
We commissioned IVAR to carry out an independent survey of our grantees. 161 responded to their survey and two focus groups were carried out.  Overall the response from grantees was very positive about the Walcot Foundation. However, there were also suggestions for improvement  (such as shortening and simplification of our grant application form) which are being taken on board and systems will be updated by end of June to take these suggestions into account.  Furthermore, grantees raised wider strategic issues and these will be fed into our strategy review which is taking place later this year.
 
For more information and the full report, please see here.

We're delighted to announce that the next Director and Clerk to the Governors will be Marcia Asare. Marcia is joining the Foundation from City & Guilds Group where her role has included setting up their Skills Development Fund, and most recently developing their Environmental, Social and Governance Strategy. She takes up her post after Easter. About the prospect of joining Walcot, Marcia said: “I am delighted to have the opportunity to lead Walcot, and support Lambeth residents to continue to navigate their way through today’s pressures and constraints, in an increasingly polarized society, where barriers are continuously changing.”

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Our Annual Review 2020/2021 has been published. View it online here. If you'd like a printed copy,  just let us know.

HEADLINES: WHAT WE DID IN 2020/21

• We distributed £2,208,510 via 401 grants. 277 directly to individuals (£324,198) and 124 to organizations, projects and schools to fund work with our target group (£1,884,312).
  
• In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we set up the Lambeth Community Response Fund (LCRF). It had two elements: re-targeting our grants programmes and attracting and distributing an additional £330,000 from other sources. Between late April and early September 2020 we made 62 grants totalling £872,487 (46 via LCRF and 16 to schools).
  
• We administered a community-led £300K grant programme piloting new approaches to improving the employment prospects of black citizens in Lambeth with long-term health conditions. This was a partnership venture with Guy's & St Thomas' Foundation and Black Thrive.
• The Walcot Futures programme ran for a second year, allowing three of our grantees to shadow the work of the Foundation and gain experience of charity governance, operations, and management.  
• We undertook major refurbishment of four properties (the Foundation owns 70+ properties, used to generate income for our work). We continued with the construction of six new houses. These, too, will generate income for our charitable activity in Lambeth.
• We improved our website, making it easier to navigate and more accessible.
• We planned BounceBack: our second-phase response to the pandemic. It is a two-year programme (2021-2023) funded by £2 million from our reserves. Beneficiaries will be Lambeth-resident low-income citizens under 30 who have (a) been displaced from their jobs because of Covid-19 and (b) those who are coming new to the jobs market and have found their opportunities narrowed by the pandemic’s impact on the wider labour market. More here.

The Living Wage Foundation has announced the revised hourly rates needed to allow people to get by, and to thrive.

Find out about the Living Wage campaign -

The average household in poverty pays almost £500 a year extra for essential services such as credit, energy, and insurance. The cause is 'the poverty premium' which refers to the extra costs incurred by low-income households when purchasing the same or similar essential goods and services as households on higher incomes.

The Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016 removed the requirement in the Child Poverty Act 2010 to publish a UK wide child poverty strategy. This left Government without a clear focus on tackling child poverty, with departments working in silos and a lack of clear leadership.

On 22 September 2021 the Work and Pensions Committee published Children in poverty: measurement and targets. Amongst its recommendations is that the Government must now commit to implementing a cross-departmental strategy for reducing child poverty, setting clear and measurable objectives which draw on the latest evidence.
Access the summary and the report itself here.
The Walcot Foundation’s submission is here.

16 projects have been awarded £1,525,232 over two years to help low-income Lambeth residents under 30 find paid work.  These projects will begin project delivery in October 2021.  They will work as a cross-referring partnership and link in with Lambeth's Youth Hubs.  BounceBack participants will also have access to £500 Job Transition Grants to help with some of the initial costs associated with starting and sustaining a new job.