The future looks bright for Swindon charity Big Breakfast Plus, which has been awarded £150,000 of National Lottery funding.
The National Lottery Community Fund grant, which will be spread across three years, is a huge boost for the charity, which offers a cooked breakfast seven-days-a-week to homeless and hungry people in the town.
Based in the Pilgrim Centre in Regent Street, and run by volunteers with just a handful of staff, and a committed board of trustees, Big Breakfast Plus provides around 100 breakfasts a day, offering a warm, welcoming, safe environment for homeless and hungry people.
James Puttick, chair of trustees, said: “This is a fantastic level of funding, which will enable us to continue to offer freshly cooked breakfasts to those who are hungry in Swindon all provided in a warm and welcoming environment.”
James said the funding would also help support investment in the charity’s longer term strategy, as well as pay for day-to-day costs, like the food and equipment.
“In recent times, we have seen the need for our service grow due to rising food and energy costs. This funding will enable us to keep up with that demand, as well as expand on some of our wider initiatives, like our giveaway fruit bags, and other nutritional projects.”
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. For more information about Big Breakfast Plus, visit https://bigbreakfastplus.org.uk/.
Article by Jo Smyth, Word Worker
