More than £400,000 awarded in grants

The London Marathon Charitable Trust (now the London Marathon Foundation), which this year is celebrating its 40th Anniversary, has announced new grants totalling £424,950 to support the safe return of physical activities for groups most adversely impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. 

This latest round of funding is to support existing grantees to enable them to provide activities for children and young people, women and girls, people with disabilities and ethnically diverse communities. 

Among the organisations that have been awarded grants is Cycle Sisters, a charity aiming to inspire and enable Muslim women to cycle, which has been awarded £70,000 through the charity’s Strategic Partnership Grant programme which is designed to challenge the inequality of access to physical activity for underrepresented groups. 

A report by Transport for London found that women, ethnically diverse communities, older people and those not in employment continue to be underrepresented among cyclists in London*. 

This grant to Cycle Sisters will seek to challenge some of these inequalities by creating four new cycling groups for Muslim women in London boroughs. 

Sarah Javaid, Founder and CEO of Cycle Sisters, said: "We're delighted to receive a grant from The London Marathon Charitable Trust. This funding will help us to address inequalities in accessing cycling by creating opportunities for hundreds more Muslim women to discover cycling as well as increasing the representation of Muslim women cyclists in the media." 

Fifteen existing Facilities grantees have also received new grants to support The Trust’s (now the London Marathon Foundation’s) priority groups in returning to physical activity, including children and young people and people with disabilities. In May 2021, findings of a YouGov poll commissioned by the Activity Alliance found that just over seven in 10 disabled people (72%) agree that the pandemic has made sport and physical activity less fair for disabled people. 

Bankside Open Spaces Trust, an environmental and volunteer charity working in Southwark, has been awarded a grant of £50,000 to provide opportunities for vulnerable children and children with disabilities to be active, by delivering a holiday scheme and designing and delivering a new programme of activities. 

Charlotte Gilsenan, CEO of Bankside Open Spaces Trust, said: “We are thrilled to have been awarded this grant after such a tough year. The funding will make a real difference to how we support our most vulnerable users at the Marlborough Sports Garden as the pandemic continues. We have already been able to work with local primary schools to identify children who would benefit from free places at our holiday sports camps, which will also include free healthy meals in the summer. The grant will also help us to better support children with additional needs to access our free after-school programmes and take part in a special festival of sport for those with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities later in the year.” 

About the funded projects: 

• Cycle Sisters (£70,000): To inspire and enable more Muslim women to cycle by creating four new Cycle Sisters’ cycling groups in London Boroughs, and developing their organisational infrastructure. 
• Access Sport CIO (£50,000): Towards overcoming barriers to participation in activities for under-represented groups by providing additional support for 10 of Access Sport’s community cycling clubs in diverse and deprived areas of London 
• Bankside Open Spaces Trust (£50,000): Towards enabling vulnerable children and children with disabilities to be active, by supporting Bankside Open Spaces Trust to deliver a holiday scheme and to design and deliver a new programme of activities in Southwark. 
• Greenhouse Sports (£50,000): Towards repairing the roof at Greenhouse Sports in Westminster, to enable the organisation to continue using sports and activities to engage young people and improve their life chances. 
• Toynbee Hall (£30,000): Towards essential community outreach in Tower Hamlets to support local people to overcome their anxieties and to re-engage in physical activity through accessible sessions, outdoor family play, gardening and active travel. 
• Stonebridge Boxing Club (£23,250): Towards supporting children, young people and adults in Brent to return to boxing activities safely after lockdown, by providing funding for new equipment including punchbags and treadmills.
• KIDS (£20,000): Towards supporting children with disabilities to be active through play, by funding essential roof repairs and drainage works at Chelsea Adventure Playground. 
• St Paul's Shadwell (£17,200): Towards re-engaging inactive members of the local community as social distancing restrictions are lifted, by funding training session at the outdoor gym and the creation of new community allotments in Tower Hamlets.
• Access Sport CIO (£15,016): Towards installing a second storage container at the new Hillsborough Park track in Sheffield, which will provide a brand-new cycling facility for the local community. 
• Rackets Cubed (£15,000): Towards enabling children to be physically active inside and outside of school, by funding weekly one-hour physical activity sessions and an emergency response programme in Hillingdon, Brent Cross and Wandsworth providing weekly community boxes made up of healthy food, educational resources and games. 
• Phoenix Canoe Club Limited (£13,000): Towards supporting disadvantaged communities to participate in activities at the Club, by enabling the delivery of targeted outreach in Barnet with the support of local partners, which will include one to one support. 
• Black Prince Trust (£12,000): Towards supporting disabled people to participate in physical activities at their Hub in Lambeth, by funding accessibility and safety improvements to create safe and secure spaces. 
• Restorative Justice for All (£11,300): Towards essential facility improvements needed to run the Youth Empowerment and Childhood Obesity projects at the Rotherhithe Community Centre, where the physical activity and wellbeing sessions will help to tackle obesity among children and their families. 
• Bede House Association (£10,000): Towards engaging children, young people and adults with learning disabilities in a range of inclusive and accessible physical activities, by funding Bede House Association’s Summer Activity Programme in Southwark. 
• Holborn Community Association (£10,000): Towards supporting people of all ages in the local community, including staff and volunteers, to recover physically and mentally from the trauma of the pandemic, by enabling ‘return to physical activity’ sessions across Holborn Community Association’s sites as part of their Covid Recovery Activity Programme. 
• Meridian Sports & Social Club (£10,000): Towards creating more opportunities for children and young people to participate in outdoor sports in Greenwich, by enabling the delivery of community activity days for physical health and mental wellbeing.
• London Borough of Haringey (£7,200): Towards encouraging increased parks usage by inactive people, particularly from disadvantaged groups, by funding activities including walking football, themed historic walks for ethnically diverse communities and self-defence classes for women and girls as part of Haringey Council's 'People Need Parks' summer programme.
• Children's Discovery Centre East London (£7,000): Towards supporting children with disabilities to become physically active and benefit from outdoor play, by providing additional funding for new playground equipment at Children's Discovery Centre East London. 
• Coin Street Centre Trust (£5,000): Towards providing opportunities for people over the age of 50 to participate in physical activities as restrictions are eased, by enabling the re-starting of Coin Street Centre Trust’s ‘Feel Good Saturday’ sessions in Southwark. 

Note: Updated in March 2023 with references to the London Marathon Foundation’s new name.