Sessions at the horticulture project at Knowetop form part of the recovery programme offered by Alternatives to clients in its community-based and residential programmes. Our Into Nature programme of afterschool and school holiday sessions, runs from March to October and there is a range of outdoor activities, storytelling, and nature inspired art and crafts. We also work with schools, and to date 108 children from the 2 local primaries have taken part in our schools programme. This funding will be used to develop and deliver a programme of outdoor activities at Knowetop for 11 to 18 year olds, providing young people with opportunities to experience nature and take part in workshops to learn new practical skills. This project is aimed at young people between 11 and 18 years old from anywhere across West Dunbartonshire. Our programme to date has focused more on younger children, and we’ve identified a gap in our provision for this age group.

FireCloud was started by a few young ‘Bankies’ in 2007. 16 years on, we work with 500 people annually from Whitecrook, Drumry, Linnvale, Parkhall, Hardgate, Faifley, Dalmuir, Old Kilpatrick, and Duntocher (and another 2500 people across Glasgow). We are based in Our Holy Redeemer Church House, Clydebank. We will use the money to employ a sessional youth development worker to help grow our current youth work into a sustainable ‘academy’ style programme for teens (11-18).  11-18 year olds in Clydebank and the surrounding areas will benefit from this funding as will the families of the teen participants, the adult volunteers who help deliver the programme and the wider community. If our young people are given a chance to be a force for good in our community then the ripples of that goodness will affect the whole community.

We run our Scout activities from the Scout Hall, Old Kilpatrick. We currently have 82 members within the group.The weekly meetings are structured to allow time for play and learning new skills through organised and approved badge work. If we were successful in our application, we would like to replace the current Xpelair fan heaters with a Mitsubishi Heavy Industry 10KW R32 multi-split air conditioner unit. This unit uses lower GWP refrigerant. Therefore, this new unit would substantially reduce our energy consumption, provide a cleaner air source as well as cutting our carbon footprint. In addition to the use by the whole of the Scout Group the facility is also used by other community groups including, a local theatre group, toddler's music group and a ballroom dancing group.

We are a Shopmobility centre, based in Clyde Shopping Centre.  We offer provision to people who may require assistance to get out and about, especially in the shopping centre. We are aware of the social isolation and want to start up a Boccia group which is suitable for people of all abilities and ages.  We also want to encourage young people to come along.  Boccia is a paralympic sport and we would look to join Disability Sports Scotland to get support from them.

Silverton Summerplay was a group set up over 25 years ago by a group of parents with children at Knoxland Primary, Braehead Primary and St Patrick’s Primary to give the children in p4-p7 a week of fun activities in the summer.  We are now a committee of 12 volunteer parents from the 3 primary schools who continue this on an annual basis.  We meet as a committee every 2 months to plan fundraising events and also the fun week.  Our fundraising consists of discos for over 100 children as well as an annual bag packing in a local supermarket.  These funds are then used to book a fun day at Knoxland and various days out visiting parks and amusement parks.  This funding will be used to cover the costs of the coaches we hire for the trips and also towards the park entrance for the children. All families who take part in the summerplay week will benefit.  The cost of the week has been £50 and any additional funding would help to keep the cost of the trip to this level with the cost of the buses increasing over the last few years.

At Mini Messy Monsters we provide messy and sensory place for all children as children with ASN could come and the parents could relax due to there being no “structure” to messy and sensory play so children were not seen as being “naught and disruptive” !. We hope in the near future to put on more days during the week also, the best thing about class is that we are accessible for all children and families in particular who have more than one child have somewhere they can take all their  children at the same time, classes are normally for the dreaded terms “asn children” or “mainstream children” and at our classes we do not believing in separating children and all children should play together! The problem is unfortunately there is not many places that are accessible for all children. Our numbers vary each session but we can take up to 40 children per session. The monies will be spent on buying accessible Messy and sensory equipment for all children, along with helping us to provide our new Makaton song and story class and accessible dance class for all children.

Dumbarton Shoto Budo is based out of the Concord Community Centre in Dumbarton. At present our group consists of approximately 30 members made up of people aged between 5 and 62. Our primary focus is Self-Defence and all of our sessions are developed around this. This funding will be used to cover the cost of renting the hall and our participants memberships and insurances which at present is our biggest expenditure.

We are a newly formed Parent Council. We represent the entire parent forum of Dumbarton Academy, and seek to improve educational and social experiences for all pupils at the school. We are committed to reducing inequity and in promoting recovery from the pandemic through opportunities to improve the Health and Wellbeing of our young people. We will establish a Sports Clothing bank within Dumbarton Academy, thus widening access to sports and wellbeing activities for young people and ensuring equity of opportunity. We don’t want any young people to miss out on health and wellbeing opportunities due to cost. The 605 pupils at Dumbarton Academy will benefit. 

We are a non-profit Community Project run by 3 members and our Project We run this Project from home and have no overheads.  We apply for Grants and accept donations to help families in need. Every penny donated is used to help families in Clydebank facing food insecurities. We work closely with all Head Teachers of the 17 Schools and also 3 Nurseies within the area.  We also liase with the Support Team from Working4U who also identify families that are in need outwith the school system.  We apply for numerous Grants and ask  locally for donations.  We are trying to give vouchers out as often as we can and at present we give out vouchers before most school breaks.  We also provide extra vouchers to schools so that they can purchase breakfast bars or snacks for children who would otherwise go without. We will buy 167 £30 Aldi Vouchers.  this will benefit families who live in Clydebank area.

Centre81 Steering group are based in Centre81 in Whitecrook and provide activities for local young people and their families.  We try to provide consistent weekly sessions focusing on arts, sports, cooking, and other activities that provide not only fun but a range of soft skills and build relationships within our community.  We are applying for funding to continue providing these opportunites for young people in 2023.