Grants
One-2-One Support for Gypsy & Traveller Groups
The Travellers Aid Trust (in partnership with the Tudor Trust) is working with IVAR to deliver a project aimed at providing practical and developmental support to Gypsy and Traveller groups in the UK in the form of strategic reviews. A strategic review is a way of identifying any big problems a group might face and finding ways to deal with them by using the experience and skills of the people within your own organisation. This is a small targeted project, which is offered free to anyone taking part.
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The main aim of this project is to help make Gypsy and Traveller groups stronger and better at what they do. The hope is that by doing this, groups will find it easier to apply for and attract funding.
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Download the fund’s leaflet, which outlines the project, explains the main stages of a strategic review and provides some background information on IVAR.
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Grant documents
The Violet Clegg Fund
The Trust runs one main small grants programme (The Violet Clegg Fund) throughout the year. All other grant programmes are one-offs and are run for a limited period of time for a specific purpose.
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The Violet Clegg Fund awards grants of up to £250 for applications that fall within two main categories; these being Overcoming Hardship or Community Benefit. Grants can either be for a specific purpose/item or meeting the overall costs of such a purpose or item.
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Category 1 grants are those that are of benefit to Gypsies and Travellers who are experiencing exceptional hardship. By exceptional hardship we mean situations that go beyond the general hardships experienced by the Gypsy and Traveller community on a day to day basis. Examples of this might be such things as repair costs for damage or loss caused by fire, relief for individuals suffering from severe ill health or disability, children with special needs, or families experiencing domestic violence.
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Category 2 grants are those that are of benefit to a community. Examples of this might be exchange trips between residents on different sites, improving or providing safe play areas or equipment or other activities that are of general benefit to members of a community.
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This is a rolling grants programme so there is no deadline and applications can be sent in at any time. Please read the full grant guidelines for more details of this programme
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To find out more about how the Trust has allocated grants under this program in the past, please click here or have a look at our latest Annual Report (Part One, Part Two).
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Fire Safety Initiative 2009
In partnership with Devon & Somerset Fire and Rescue Service, the Trust distributed Carbon Monoxide detectors and fire alarms to Gypsies and Travellers in the South West of England along with a specially developed leaflet on fire safety for the Traveller community. The Trust funded 100 free Carbon Monoxide alarms as part of this project. The programme was launched at Glastonbury Festival where many Travellers work and at which the Trust has an information stall every year.
Further fire awareness kits were distributed to sites and roadside encampments throughout the South West during the course of the summer. The distribution of 70 of the kits was monitored by the Trust and from the data collected it was found that the majority of alarms had gone to new Travellers. Of those monitored, eighteen beneficiaries had had direct experience of a fire and thirty eight were unaware of the dangers of Carbon Monoxide gas. Only seven beneficiaries had had grants from the Trust in the past. Although a follow up survey has not been carried out yet, the Trust is aware of one family who were woken in the night by their alarm due to a faulty gas refrigerator.
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The DIY Fund
At the time when the Travellers Aid Trust was being re-launched, Comic Relief commissioned a report entitled Evaluation of Comic Relief’s Special Initiative for Gypsies and Travellers 2003 exploring the difficulties experienced by Gypsy and Traveller groups in securing funding. While the Trust was developing and delivering targeted grants programmes to benefit individual Gypsies and Travellers, Comic Relief entered into a phase of dedicated funding to provide core grants to local, regional and national groups representing or working with Travellers. As part of this initiative, they also sought to support the Traveller Law Reform process which was emerging at that time. In October 2004, the Travellers Aid Trust was invited to become involved in the work being done by Comic Relief by facilitating and administering a grant to employ a Development Worker to support and develop the Traveller Law Reform Coalition – a shared platform for all Gypsies and Travellers to have a voice in lobbying for law reform. The Coalition eventually broke down in 2006 due to strong differences of opinion and two separate projects (The Traveller Law Reform Project and the National Federation of Gypsy Liaison Groups) evolved out of it to continue its work and are still running today.
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As a result of the increase in core support given to some of the larger and more established Gypsy and Traveller groups by Comic Relief (as well as by others such as the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, Allen Lane Foundation, the Tudor Trust and Big Lottery Fund outside of London and City Parochial and Bridge Trust in London), these organisations became better placed to support the many smaller emerging and struggling community groups that had started to spring up in the wake of the Coalition’s work, but which in turn were struggling for funding. As a result of consultation with the Coalition members and the Trust, Comic Relief launched a final targeted programme of small grants for Gypsies and Travellers in late 2004 to help start up or develop these smaller groups. Again, the Trust was asked to become directly involved and took over the programme during its first round of grants. This programme became known as the DIY Fund and has provided grants of up to £3,000 to groups with an income of under £50,000. The Trust added further funds in 2007-2008 from its own asset to provide bridging grants of £1,000 to groups previously funded by Comic Relief or through the DIY Fund which were still struggling. This programme is now closed.
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Directory of Gypsy and Traveller Groups, funded by TAT DIY Fund, 2005 – 2007
Following five years of work supporting and promoting local, national and regional Gypsy and Traveller groups, the Trust is looking back over its work and the communities it has funded. This directory list those Gypsy and Traveller groups that have benefited directly from the support of the Travellers Aid Trust through the DIY Fund between 2005 and 2007. All groups listed are constituted.
This directory does not comprise a complete listing of Gypsy and Traveller groups in the UK and may not fully detail the current activities of the groups listed. The information given is taken directly from information supplied to the Trust by groups during application and/or monitoring processes and does not represent the views or opinions of the Trust. For fully up-to-date information, please contact groups directly.
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September 2008
Download the Report as a PDF here
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Evaluation of Grants Programmes 2003-2005
In the autumn of 2005, the Board of Trustees agreed to commission an independent and comprehensive evaluation of the Trust’s own grants programmes between 2003 and 2005. The programmes to be evaluated were only those developed and delivered by the Trust using the Trust’s own asset. The evaluation was not designed to look at the delivery of grants programmes funded by other grant-makers.
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This decision was taken to enable the Trust to better understand how accessible the grants programmes were and to improve where possible on how the Trust operates in this capacity. It is the view of the Trustees that this is a critical issue due to the nature of the beneficiary group who can, as a result of the often very difficult circumstances in which they live, be hard to reach using conventional methods of communication and who often encounter considerably obstacles in accessing mainstream services.
