BBC Children In Need Delivers Nearly £17 million Worth Of Grants

BBC Children in Need is distributing nearly £17million worth of grants this week which will help make a positive difference to the lives of disadvantaged children and young people around the UK.

The August 2007 grant allocation is the second and final round of grants which will be made by the charity this year thanks to a current 2006 Appeal total of £32,434,944.

The appeal had an auspicious start last November, when it was declared that the British public had raised a record-breaking £18.3m at the end of the BBC One telethon. In the nine months since appeal night, donations from fundraisers, schools and businesses around the UK have continued to accumulate and the final appeal total looks likely to top £33m.

The amazing achievements of the charity’s supporters are too numerous to mention but a special thank you belongs to Graeme Chapman and the Kingfield Heath team in Sheffield who raised £67,559 for the 2006 Appeal. This takes his total contribution over two decades of fundraising for BBC Children in Need to over £500,000.

And the charity’s many corporate partners including Boots, HSBC, BT, Asda, Lakeland, Fonebak and CostCo helped raised over £3m worth of additional funding for children and young people across the UK through their staff fundraising efforts and a fantastic range of Pudsey products.

Since March, the BBC charity has been assessing and processing thousands of applications from projects around the UK in order to distribute these funds. The 553 projects selected all work with youngsters who are affected by homelessness, neglect, abuse or poverty, or have encountered serious illness, disabilities and psychological disorders.

The average amount awarded to a project this August was £30,620 but the grants range widely from the £200 paying for bean bags and toys in a Lincolnshire playgroup for children with mental health problems, all the way up to the two-year grant of £1,750,000 given to the Frank Buttle Trust.

Over the course of a long partnership with BBC Children in Need, the Frank Buttle Trust have used their expertise to provide smaller welfare grants to individual children. These grants pay for basic essentials such as clothing, beds, bedding, washing machines and cookers or contribute to the costs of equipment which helps improve the child’s quality of life.