Groups share £1,500 to support families across Horsham, Crawley and Mid Sussex
Grants presented in Burgess Hill will help keep a Henfield football match free for bereaved fathers, stock food bank shelves in Horsham and fund support groups for parents and young children.
The groups across Crawley, Horsham and Mid Sussex will benefit from £1,500 in grants.
The Martins Funeral Directors Community Fund had planned to make two awards but added a third after a strong response from local organisations. Baby Loss United, Horsham Matters and Home-Start Crawley, Horsham & Mid-Sussex each received £500 at The Martins’ Burgess Hill funeral home on Friday, October 16.
Baby Loss United uses football to provide peer support for bereaved fathers. Its grant will help cover pitch hire, kit and training equipment for its annual match at Henfield FC during Baby Loss Awareness Week, which runs from October 9 to 15. The money will help keep the match free for players.
Horsham Matters will use its grant to stock shelves with essentials for its four busiest food bank sessions at Redkiln Close in Horsham. The charity operates 15 weekly food banks across the district and provided 8,180 food parcels in its last financial year.
Home-Start Crawley, Horsham & Mid-Sussex will put its grant towards support groups for parents and young children facing isolation, bereavement, financial hardship or poor mental health. The money will pay for wellbeing activities, therapeutic books, resources, refreshments, volunteer expenses and project materials.
Christopher Hatt, area development manager at The Martins, presented the grants with funeral arranger Lucy Covey.
He said: “We were delighted by the response to this round of our Community Fund and by the quality of the applications we received.
“We had originally planned to make two awards, but there were so many deserving organisations who applied that it made sense to increase the funding available and support a third project.”
Lucy Covey said: “These three organisations are helping people in very different circumstances, but what they have in common is that the funding will make a practical difference locally.
From supporting bereaved fathers and helping families put food on the table to providing much-needed help for parents and young children, we are very proud to support the work they are doing.”
The fund supports not-for-profit projects that benefit people living within three miles of a participating Martins funeral home.