The Somerset Coronavirus Appeal, launched by Somerset Community Foundation (SCF), is offering funding of up to £10,000 to local charities and community organisations delivering frontline work that will help communities recover from the impact of the Coronavirus outbreak. The first phase of the appeal has already seen grants of almost £500,000 being awarded to more than 170 local good causes acr...

Cooper Associates Mortgages has achieved double success at the 2020 ESTAS - the Estate and Letting Agents Awards also incorporating mortgage advisors. For the fourth consecutive year we have been named Best Mortgage Office in the UK and Best Regional Mortgage Broker in the South West. The ESTAS is an independent customer feedback scheme, with the winners determined by feedback provided by client...

PROMISEworks provides long-term inspirational, one-to-one mentoring to some of Somerset’s most vulnerable children and young people. Some of them are on the edge of care or have left the care system. The charity’s volunteer mentors help them as they deal with struggles young people should not have to face. Many will have never experienced the benefits of security and trust that come with the...

At King’s College, Taunton, the lockdown has led to a number of online innovations to help its pupils and over the last two weeks of term the school ran a Festival of Careers and Entrepreneurship for the Upper Sixth Form. Making full use of the omnipresent Teams technology, and the good will of their guests, twice a day for ten days King’s welcomed a wide range of speakers, all with the desir...

Year 8 pupils at King's Hall School used their creativity to ensure their usual charity fundraiser went ahead – albeit virtually - and raised more than £1,200 for the charity Brainwave. As with many other aspects of school life this term, pupils and staff began toying with the idea of creating a virtual version of the traditional Year 8 Charity Fair. This event would normally take place in the...

Bridgwater & Taunton College digital media design student Emily Bradley recently won the Global Innovators Category in The Apps for Good Awards. ‘Space Bubble’ is a mental health app for teens designed to help keep the user’s mental health on-track through daily, tailored activities. Emily’s inspiration came after she struggled with her own mental health and she felt other young peo...

During the pandemic lockdown period, while the rest of the team were in furlough, School in a Bag’s Founder and CEO Luke Simon has been running a skeleton workload in between home-schooling and climbing staircases!   Luke read about the Three Peaks Staircase Challenge in a magazine and promoted it as a potential fundraising idea to the charity’s supporter network.  To inspire others, he a...

As lockdown eases, schools and businesses are planning how to move forward and Somerset Skills & Learning (SS&L) wants to know how best to support them, working together towards economic recovery and helping to future-proof the Somerset community. Apprenticeships have been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic and are very much in the national spotlight, with the Government poised to offer a ...

bibic is delighted to have received a grant from the National Lottery Communities Fund. This will allow the charity to reach many more families and children across the UK via their new digital services and to support those that truly need them most. Chief Operating Officer, Pip Buckley, said: “This generous grant from The National Lottery means the world to a small charity like us. This has bee...

Sparkford-based Sycamore Process Engineering has taken delivery of a luxury hamper of Somerset produce after being chosen at random from the businesses which completed Q2 of the British Chambers’ of Commerce Quarterly Economic Survey (QES), which was run locally by Somerset Chamber. The Chamber received a record number of responses and Katie Burt, of Sycamore Process Engineering, said she was t...

Wincanton, the largest British third-party logistics (3PL) company, has announcd three senior appointments to the business development team. The appointments, which are effective immediately, have been made to drive transformational growth in Wincanton’s core and selected markets. They are as follows: Martin Dougherty is appointed Business Development Director. He has over 30 years’ experi...

Southwest company SSG Training and Consultancy has had a very busy 12 weeks – keeping local delegates trained and helping many local businesses return to work. Not unlike many other companies, SSG had to quickly adapt when COVID-19 meant training venues closed their doors in March. SSG understood the need to broaden its service delivery to meet the needs of a changing environment. This included...

Local fundraiser Rachel Clark has won the Volunteer Fundraiser of the Year award in the Institute of Fundraising's national awards, in recognition of her work raising more than £55,000 for cancer counselling charity We Hear You (WHY). Rachel said: “I'm overwhelmed, to be honest! I was up against such high calibre charities and fundraisers who all deserved to win - just being shortlisted was in...

Somerset Community Foundation (SCF) is launching the next phase of its Somerset Coronavirus Appeal, in a bid to raise £1.5m for our communities across the county. In the three months since the appeal was first launched [mid-March 2020], thanks to the incredible support of local donors and the National Emergencies Trust, the appeal has raised more than £800,000 for Somerset. Those donations have...

Volunteers’ Week earlier this month was a chance to say a big ‘thank you’ to volunteers across Somerset and shine a spotlight on the incredible community response to the pandemic. Over recent months, thousands of volunteers from existing charities and newly established COVID-19 community groups have stepped up to support vulnerable residents – and for many people it has been a lifeline. ...