Grant funding helping communities warm their homes
A project created to help families and people in Sheffield through fuel poverty has successfully supported 60 homes thanks to charitable funding.
The Upper Don Community Energy received £5,000 of funding from South Yorkshire’s Community Foundation (SYCF) to deliver its Community Warming Project in the Penistone, Stocksbridge, Chapeltown and High Green areas.
Established in 2019, Upper Don Community Energy is dedicated to helping local communities reduce both carbon emissions and energy costs.
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They do this by volunteers raising awareness and sharing practical advice from local professionals on how to make homes more energy efficient and sustainable.
The funding allowed the group to hire a dedicated Community Warming project administrator to coordinate efforts, manage resources, and pay the salaries of those upgrading the homes.
The project provided information and advice, and paid for the installation of energy efficiency measures such as, insulation tape for windows and doors, draft excluders, door curtains, LED light bulbs, radiator foil and pipe lagging.
Catherine Cotterill, Director at Upper Don Community Energy, said:
Our Community Warming Project has been a success due to the many hours given up by volunteers and the brilliant organisation of our Project Administrator - funded by South Yorkshire’s Community Foundation - without whom we couldn’t have supported so many residents in fuel poverty.
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To mark the success of the two-year project, a celebration event was held at The Venue, in Stocksbridge, bringing together volunteers and paid staff and supporters, to recognise their achievements.
To complete this phase of the project, Upper Don Community Energy plan to use the remainder of the grant money to fund a temporary project administrator to delegate the remaining resources to the community. They are now consulting on a possible Phase 2, which will hopefully support residents with damp and mould prevention and maintenance.
Jess O’Neill, Grants and Partnerships Manager at SYCF, said:
We are proud to be able to support the Upper Don Community Energy in this project.
It’s great to see so many people willing to help and fight fuel poverty together and enable people to keep their homes warm due to this project.
Meet Jess
Jess works Tuesdays - Fridays every week and oversees all of the grant programmes, so is able to help with specific and general queries about our programmes, our application systems and processes.
She also oversees our panels and our many volunteers that lead on our decision making for many of our funds.
Jess holds a weekly Teams drop-in sessions as an opportunity to chat to groups about any questions they may have, or assistance with our application system. These are held most Wednesdays 4pm - 5pm. The link to these meetings can be found on our Apply page.
Jess O'Neill
Grants and Partnerships Manager
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