Select a region
AJC celebrates fifty years of giving with awards of £10,000 to 52 local charities.
IT WAS A DECADE into its 50 years’ life before the Association of Jersey Charities (AJC) became a recognized grant-awarding body. In 1981, the International Year of the Disabled, for the first time the Association received the net Jersey profits from one CI Lottery draw to benefit local charities.
The AJC’s 50th Golden Jubilee anniversary last year was celebrated in various ways, notably partnering with Jersey Finance, which itself was celebrating 60 years of Jersey’s finance industry and its own 20th birthday.
50@50 Grants
In the latter part of the anniversary year, however, the AJC launched “50@50” – a major and particularly special initiative whereby locally registered charities were invited to apply for 50 awards of £10,000 each.
With a value of more than half a million pounds this was the largest single award ever made by the AJC.
There were so many compelling applications in the wake of Covid-19 that ultimately awards were made to 52 local charitable organisations.
All the recipients, with details of how they are spending their awards, can be seen here.
Examples of diversity
The assessment panel were pleased that their choices were able to reflect the extraordinary diversity of the applicants and how varied were the ways in which they served the community, from the innovative to the long-established - plus new charities established to meet very specific needs.
It is perhaps invidious to highlight just a few from the 52 that rightly deserved awards but the following illustrate how some of those awards have been used and just how much the community, wittingly or otherwise, relies on charities to meet very diverse necessities.
Healing Waves are using their award to employ a seasonal Surf Therapy Instructor and Wet Wheels, another sea-oriented charity, will be using theirs for training including disability awareness in a maritime context.
The Good Companions Club has used the funds received towards the cost of a new minibus replacing “an older, slightly worn out” one. The award received by the Salvation Army will allow free access to participants in three projects, the Lunch Club, the Bumblebee Field and the Toddler Group, while the Scouts are now able to pay a quantity surveyor to assess their five premises to ensure that they are fit for use by their young people and all the other users.
Jersey Action Against Rape are using the award to create a social media and print campaign called Support Survivors while Philip’s Footprints will be using the funds to refresh their website which has been largely unchanged since the charity’s inception in 2008.
For another relative newcomer, the Motor Neurone Disease Association, the funding will provide specialised equipment and other support for those with the disease in the Island.
Pictured: A project undertaken by the Jersey Biodiversity Centre using the awards from this initiative.
A major AJC jubilee initiative
“The 50@50 initiative was one of the most successful that the AJC has ever conceived,” says chairman Kevin Keen.
“And anyone watching our video will see what an impact the awards have had for the 52 charities involved and, more importantly, those in the community for whom the charities have been established.
“We are very impressed with how all the charities are using the funding they have received and hopefully these few examples give a very positive indication to all those who support the AJC in any way, particularly financially, how beneficial their support has been and will continue to be.”
More about 50@50 can be found here.
