Wow. Another wonderful day in the lives of two Women’s Fund for Scotland grantmakers. We’ve just allocated £69,000 in our small grants programme to 15 diverse organisations from the Highlands to the Central belt.
Today’s grant making included the last of the Tampon Tax funds; this is money collected as VAT on sanitary protection products that the UK Treasury subsequently awarded to grant-making organisations to benefit women. Awarded £600,000 only a year ago, we scaled up our grant making tenfold and have now successfully distributed all the money to a very wide variety of groups working with women throughout Scotland. The demand for funds was huge, greatly exceeding the money we had. Sadly we are now faced with an equally rapid scaling down of our grant making unless we can raise additional funds.
Factoid Did you know that for many Deaf people, their first language is BSL (British Sign Language) and they may not be able to read written English. How often in a normal day do we read something, send a text or an email or make a phone call. Imagine if you couldn’t, how isolating would that be? Today’s grant making for two groups working with deaf women gave us cause to think about this. Now you can think about it too. Other groups with particular issues we were able to help included Polish women who had experienced domestic abuse and lesbian women struggling with issues relating to their sexuality.
One of the ways women can improve their situation is by setting up their own businesses. Three of the grants we approved will help them to do this. Another way is moving into employment traditionally done by men which is often better paid, and women in Perth and Kinross will now be able to get the relevant training.
WFS can make a difference to so many women and girls to make better lives for themselves and their families throughout Scotland. You can help us to do this by donating. It’s worth it.
