Social Impact

Energise Barnsley gave a grant of £4,900 to the Thurgoland Bowling Club. The club has provided bowling for over 50 years to the local community, ranging from beginners to expert bowlers. Run by an active and dedicated committee of volunteers, the club has over 80 members of all ages who play regularly, providing players with gentle exercise and valuable social contact. Our grant enabled all 12 halogen external lights to be stripped out, allowing for the lighting posts to be extended by 2 meters for the fitting of 16 x 150W LED fittings. This has provided the club with better lighting conditions and lower electricity bills.

The solar fund granted £10,000 to the Dodworth Miners Welfare Association. The association has a large community footprint across all ages, with youth and senior football and rugby teams, as well as bowling clubs and social rooms. The monies were granted to replacing their tungsten lights with LED lights across all their facilities, including floodlight pitches. This reduces carbon emissions and electricity bills for the association, as well as the added benefit of hiring a local electrician.

We awarded a £20,000 grant to Community First Credit Union, Barnsley – the solar fund award is to deliver four services focused on those in society that truly need assistance to better manage their daily finances. This will be achieved by the credit union working with key partners like Barnsley Council. 

The first service ‘Budgeting Account’ manages an individual’s critical payments; allowing them to save if they want to, but fundamentally, it also allows them to get on with their lives knowing that payments will not be missed. 

The second service ensures critical payments like rent, council tax, and utilities are not missed, and tenants have a channel of additional support should issues arise. 

The third is access a debt support loan service. 

The fourth is a service that securely issues cash where it is needed urgently, either using their savings held at the credit union, or on request to issue money from a supporting agency.

The fund co-invested with Henry Boot Foundation into FareShare Yorkshire – a leading charity redistributing surplus food within the region. Please see here our grant impact. It was a pleasure to listen to Grimethorpe Community Farm present at our AGM and hear the positive impact they are having in their community.

The fund made awards to Gateway Church, Age UK Barnsley and Citizens Advice Bureau Barnsley, and the Dearne Playhouse Theatre. The board of EB asked Age UK and CAB to work jointly on an initiative to prevent excess winter deaths in a statistically high ward in Barnsley – Worsbrough. EB produced a white paper ‘Preventing Excess Winter Deaths’ on the initiative to aid planning of the pilot project. The grant awarded to Gateway Church for their ‘Food For Thought – Healthy Cook and Eat’ initiative catalysed other local funding to co-invest, resulting in more classes being available for those on low-incomes. Please view the presentation from Gateway Church to our 2018 AGM here.

The members voted at the AGM to make awards to Goldthorpe Development Group, AGE UK Barnsley, Wombwell Primary School and St Aidan Community Hall. The projects funded include paying for skips to prevent fly tipping and remove unwanted waste in neighbourhoods and funding a street bed planting team to continue their good work in bringing a sense of pride back to neglected streets.