Local community Trust, Rotherham United Community Trust, is today celebrating after being awarded £20,000 in National Lottery funding to support its Every Miller Matters project. The group, based at the AESSEAL New York Stadium, will use the money to continue running three essential sessions for the community; coffee morning, walking football and inclusion football.
Rotherham United Community Trust (RUCT) is the charitable arm of Rotherham United Football Club. They work with partners and communities across the borough to plan and deliver beneficial provisions to a range of groups and individuals. With the community at the heart of everything they do, their passionate team are committed to ensuring their topics are current and relevant, aiming to make a positive and lasting impact on the people they work with.
The group has been running the three sessions that this money will fund for a while now, but with previous funding coming to an end, the Trust were looking for further funding to continue supporting the Rotherham community. Their ‘Coffee Mornings’ sessions have been a hit with the wider community, allowing people to make new friends, get out of the house, and learn more with free workshops regularly taking place. Walking Football and Inclusion Football are two very popular sessions that a lot of people with physical disabilities or mental health problems rely on, seeing many success stories come from these sessions where participants become staff members leading to new opportunities and long lasting impact on their lives.
The new funding from The National Lottery Community Fund, which distributes money raised by National Lottery players for good causes and is the largest community funder in the UK, will see these sessions continue for the next year meaning anyone wanting to attend can and will be able to get involved for free.
Emma Schofield, Health & Wellbeing Manager, says: “We’re delighted that The National Lottery Community Fund has recognised our work in this way. Now, thanks to National Lottery players we will be able to continue offering these sessions to thousands of people a year for free, this breaking many barriers that may stop people getting involved in current times. This is important because each session offers a range of support for different people; whether this may be mental health support, keeping them active and moving, or just getting them out of the house and socializing.”
The National Lottery Community Fund recently launched its strategy, ‘It starts with community’, which will underpin its efforts to distribute at least £4 billion of National Lottery funding by 2030.
As part of this, the funder has four key missions, which are to support communities to come together, be environmentally sustainable, help children and young people thrive and enable people to live healthier lives.
National Lottery players raise over £30 million a week for good causes across the UK. Thanks to them, last year (2023/24) The National Lottery Community Fund awarded over half a billion pounds (£686.3 million) of life-changing funding to communities across the UK, supporting over 13,700 projects to turn their great ideas into reality.
To find out more visit www.TNLCommunityFund.org.uk
