Scottish Children’s Lottery funding for Eyemouth LINKS
Eyemouth LINKS awarded a £8441 grant from the Scottish Children’s Lottery Chance to Flourish fund!
During lockdown Eyemouth LINKS delivered 375 healthy ingredient bags, supporting families to cook at home and share meals virtually. Now the project will be able to continue thanks to £8441 from Chance to Flourish.
Eyemouth LINKS has shown how much appetite exists for local community-driven solutions to shared challenges. Their work has been addressing loneliness, unequal access to food, and new barriers many families have faced in connecting with each other during lockdown. The LINKS Lockdown meal ingredient bags were delivered to 75 families during COVID-19 restrictions, with 161 children benefiting from them.
LINKS (Linking Ideas for Nutrition Knowledge and Support) Eyemouth does what it says on the tin. It links up families in Eyemouth, through social events centred around good food on a budget.
There has been great local engagement with the project – the food bags reached more people week on week, and families took part in online dinners across households. There has also been a buzz of online activity, with 1851 comments and 4492 reactions in the LINKS Facebook group. Families have been supporting one another digitally through the lockdown, brought together by the importance of making sure everyone in the community has the access they need to healthy food.
The new funding will make a huge difference to the project’s 226 members – and the 5 enthusiastic LINKS volunteers!
How LINKS Eyemouth has been making a difference
For many, the regular meet-ups are a real lifeline, connecting people who, for one reason or another, don’t have regular social events and possibly feel isolated or unconnected from others. The project is coordinated by a young mum who, herself being at the heart of the community, has lived experience of the day-to-day challenges encountered by many families.
Over the past year the group have enjoyed Halloween pumpkin carving and soup-making, an outdoor pizza session, weaning workshops and much more. In between times they have built up a strong virtual community, with recipe sharing and general support in between sessions.
Now that virtual community has come into its own. The current crisis has meant people cannot meet up as previously, and may have limited access to ingredients. This has not fazed the inventive and resourceful participants, who have embraced the Lockdown with special LINKS Lockdown aprons and virtual live cookery sessions!
The Scottish Children’s Lottery was launched in October 2016 to raise money for children in Scotland, with proceeds helping to improve the lives of children right across the country and make a real difference to those who need it most. Chance to Flourish operates as a society lottery under the Scottish Children’s Lottery and supports projects that work within the area of social development of pre-school children and their families and carers, making a positive difference to children’s lives in their early years.
Ken Barclay (Chair of Trustees for the Scottish Children’s Lottery) said: “I am delighted that we have been able to provide funding to Eyemouth LINKS from the monies generated from the Scottish Children’s Lottery which was established to promote and support the development and potential of children and young people in Scotland.”
To find out more about Eyemouth LINKS, please contact:-
Ruth.n@otbds.org