Toy Trust gave £108,000 to charities during the year; fundraising continues with annual Media Auction.
The Toy Trust awarded £108,000 in grants to 35 small UK children’s charities in 2020, helping thousands of children.
In a special update sent out to the trade earlier this week, Graham Canning, Toy Trust committee chairman, acknowledged that COVID-19 made for an extremely challenging year for many UK children’s charities that the Toy Trust supports.
“I am pleased to report that the Toy Trust Committee remained active in 2020 and felt compelled to respond positively,” Graham commented. “And so, we invited small UK children’s charities that were known to us already to apply for funding that had received support within the last three years. We assessed applications carefully in line with the Toy Trust’s application criteria to ensure funds achieve the best possible outcome for disadvantaged children all over the UK through grants given.”
35 charities in total were supported, with Graham sharing stories from five charities on how the grants had helped.
Handicapped Children’s Action Group, a charity which brings mobility to children across the UK, received £5,000, while NARA The Breathing Charity also received £5,000 to support the work being carried out by NARA’s UK Child Health Community Care Programme.
The Toy Trust grant to Bag Books helped it to produce 350 of its hand crafted multi-sensory workbooks which featured a new story, The Friendly Caterpillar, while Bradford Toy Library used its £5,000 donation to fund a ‘Boredom Buster Bags’ initiative during the lockdown.
All Hallows Bow, meanwhile, used funding to put together 36 story sacks which it has used to run socially distanced play sessions at its centre and to lend out to families to use at home with video support from the team during lockdowns when in-person work was no longer possible.
The Toy Trust will remain active in 2021 and will shortly be re-opening applications for funding.
In the meantime, the annual Media Auction is now live and the toy industry is being encouraged to place their bids on packages from broadcasters and channels including ITV, CITV, Milkshake, Sky Kids, Turner and Ketchup TV among others.
The deadline for the auction is Monday February 1 and you can view all the lots by clicking on this link.
The full list of charities supported by The Toy Trust in 2020 is as follows:
The Daisy Garland; The Voice that makes a difference; All Hallows Bow; Cedarwood Trust; Dingley’s Promise; NARA The Breathing Charity; The Bradford Toy Library; Handicapped Children’s Action Group; Shepherds Bush Families Projects; Walsall Bereavement Support Service; Quaker Service; Dorset Children’s Foundation; Tarka Child Contact Centre; Brighter; Opportunities through Supported Play; Barton Community Association; WHISH – Whitby Hidden Impairments Support & Help; Beryl Thyer Memorial Africa Trust; Christchurch Open Awards Centre; Special Stars Foundation; Bag Books; Children’s Aid Team; Friends of Alfreton Park; Reading Family Aid Group; Three Ways School; The Jessie May Trust; Special Educational Needs Families Support; CP Sport; The Churn Project; Friends of St Luke’s; Living Paintings; Pontllanfraith Children’s Contact Centre; Families United Network; Noreen’s Kids; Wyvern School Foundation Trust; Devon Development Education.
