Lottery awards Wastesavers £160,000
Wastesavers Charitable Trust (Wastesavers), a community not-for-profit recycling group, has announced that its project to help young people gain practical work experience has been awarded £160,000 from the National Lottery’s Big Lottery Fund. The funding will be used to further this project for a further three years.
The PEAK project
Through the PEAK project, Wastesavers works with local schools to provide a working and learning environment for young people who ‘find it difficult in mainstream education’ and are looking for practical, hands-on experience outside the formal classroom setting.
The scheme gives 14-18 year olds experience in various projects such as plumbing, carpentry, bike repair and refurbishment, resulting in Key Skills qualifications and qualifications in development.
While these projects provide opportunities for the young people involved, they also benefit the local community: the project’s white goods and furniture repair shops provide the Wastesavers Community Furniture Shop with items available to those on a low income.
Improving lives
On receiving the funding, Penny Goodwin, CEO at Wastesavers, said: “We are absolutely delighted to have obtained funding from the Big Lottery Fund for our PEAK project. We are passionate about improving the local community, and by expanding our work with young people, we really will be able to improve lives.”
Over the next three years, the funding will reportedly enable the project to enlarge its working area to cover all of Newport and Torfaen and to offer its services to additional schools and organisations.
In addition to current activities such as bike maintenance, IT, carpentry, home cookery and drug and alcohol awareness sessions – the project will also now provide activities in horticulture, food hygiene, healthy eating, plumbing and decorating, amongst others.
The Big Lottery Fund’s Reaching Communities programme, which aims to help ‘those most in need’ and build stronger communities, has also recently funded the waste management training scheme run by Kotuku Community Interest Company.
Read more about the PEAK project.
