The Merchant Taylors' Foundation makes grants that target education, homelessness and projects to create positive lasting change to people's lives. We help people flourish in the face of life's challenges.
Our Coronavirus Appeal supports those hit hardest by the impact of COVID-19.
Never has it been so vital to help others at their moment of greatest need. Read on to see why these charities desperately need our help and how your support will make a huge difference.
Online Music Classes for People with severe and profound Learning Difficulties
For over 20 years, Soundabout has worked to empower people with severe and profound learning difficulties through music. Training teachers, parents and carers, Soundabout helps unlock the potential of a child or person cared for as well as providing community-run music sessions and one-to-one music sessions in a child's family home.
Since COVID-19 struck, families have had their usual support structures stripped away with the lockdown restrictions imposed, causing many of them to simply exist in survival mode. Soundabout has developed online services so that they can continue to be there for those who need them. A small charity, they have been hit hard by the lockdown – the training and modelling projects they usually deliver have been postponed or cancelled altogether and any usual fundraising events have disappeared.
The demand on their services hasn't gone away, instead, as can be expected during times of stress, it has increased as their service users need more help and more people begin to seek their support in addition. The charity needs your help to fund the required equipment and support to ensure their outreach projects can go online to help as many as they can.
- £140 could cover a music practitioner to deliver Soundabout Live!, interactive music-making sessions for children and young people with severe and profound learning disabilities in their homes.
- £270 may fund virtual sessions with clear sound and vision to families by a trained musical practitioner including all necessary equipment and support for families.
- £400 could fund Soundabout Choir’s Director for a month to run the virtual rehearsals, run the monthly rehearsal sessions, online resources and connect everyone who would like to take part to film themselves and put together performances from home.
Summer School for Merchant Taylors' Oxfordshire Academy Trust
The two schools in the Merchant Taylors’ Oxfordshire Academy Trust, Wallingford School and Brightwell cum Sotwell CofE Primary School, need your help to fund Summer Schools for some of their most vulnerable and disadvantaged students.
Many students are struggling with remote learning, from accessing online resources, lacking the necessary support at home or resources, to the impact of isolation on their mental health, the impact of which is felt in their academic work. Added to this, there is pressure to perform well once this is over, that the chasm of missed lessons and opportunities to be helped won't have any lasting impact on their futures.
A Summer School is vital to helping vulnerable students get back up-to-speed for the new academic year. To care for a child's education is also to care for their confidence and their mental health and this provision will enable students to go into their next year with confidence for their futures.
- The schools require around £5,000 to be able to fund this necessary project.
