TWO community groups know first hand the real value of funding grants from a south-west foundation.
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The WDEA Works Foundation has provided $5800 to the Warrnambool Breastfeeding Centre and $5000 South Warrnambool Football Netball Club’s new all abilities sport and training program.
The training program will be a pilot to offer the club’s all abilities football cohort of 26 players with carefully structured development and training to foster skill development in areas on and off the football field.
Program designer and SWFNC Committee Member Andrew Hardiman said $5000 in seed funding would help get the project up and running for its first year and said the training and development the club had designed would go well beyond schooling players in ball-handling skills and game plans.
“It will also build individual’s capacity in regards to team work, communication skills, empathy, commitment, initiative and social skills, that will lay foundations for future employment and community involvement,” he said
The funding allocated to the breastfeeding centre, in Koroit Street, has seen the instillation of automatic doors which will help make it more accessible to disabled mothers and mothers with prams.
“It’s made every bit of difference,” breastfeeding centre president Barb Glare said.
“We don’t get any government funding. So it’s a lot of money for us to have to find.
“Anything that makes a mother’s life easier is good.
“With our centre being a hub for around 80 families a week, including the families of children with special needs, parents need to have the confidence their children are safely contained in the environment provided.”
WDEA Works’ Warrnambool Site Manager Trudi Perkins said the centre provided a unique service to young families that actively fostered social inclusion and offered a safe, clean and supportive environment at a time that could be isolating and difficult.
“Young families knowing there is a clean and welcoming environment available to make their time out and about with young children easier,” she said.
“Social inclusion is proven to assist with the pressures of parenting and this Centre makes the sometimes daunting task of taking young children out and about a little less daunting.”
Ms Perkins praised the vision of SWFNC and said its commitment to the all abilities football competition went back some years.
“The club’s move to formalise and structure the support of this all abilities initiative is impressive and comes very much from the club’s desire to build a better club and a better local community,” she said.
The WDEA Works Foundation was established in 2004, and has since allocated almost $900,000 to a wide range of projects across regional Victoria.
It was established to provide financial assistance to community organisations, to help people with a disability and disadvantage achieve employment, employment related skills and foster greater social participation and community access.
The foundation’s next round of funding will close on September 17.
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