Emergency funding to help our partners adapt during the pandemic

Clarion Futures’ Covid response grant programme helped Women’s Inclusive Team meet the enormous challenges the pandemic posed to their local communities.

Supporting Women’s Inclusive Team

The Covid response grant programme was established by Clarion Futures in April 2020 to provide emergency funding to longstanding partners supporting our residents and communities through the pandemic and has proved to be a lifeline for many organisations faced with a surge in demand for support.

Women’s Inclusive Team, a charity based in Tower Hamlets supporting and empowering Black, Asian and minority ethnic women, is one of the organisations to have received a grant from Clarion Futures, enabling them to meet the enormous challenges the pandemic has posed to their local community.

When the pandemic hit, with the help of over 300 volunteers and thanks to funding from Clarion Futures and other partners, they set up a food bank and community kitchen which provided weekly food parcels and daily hot meals to hundreds of families and vulnerable people, as well as a telephone befriending service and youth programmes for children who went without nearly a year of school.

A community-led response to the pandemic

Safia Jama, founder and CEO of Women’s Inclusive Team, said: “We treasure the relationships we have grown with organisations that have a strong desire to help our local community.

The funding we received from Clarion Futures went a long way in enabling us to quickly respond to the sudden hardships women, their families and vulnerable people from Black and ethnic minority communities faced during the Covid-19 crisis with setting up a community kitchen and food bank and organising telephone befriending services to tackle loneliness and isolation.”

She added: “Our work is just beginning as we continue supporting ethnic minority women and their families but we’re proud of our grassroots, community-led response to the pandemic. We wouldn’t have been able to do it without the volunteers and partners who have helped us go the extra mile.”