Mazars Charitable Trust awards its final major grants

Grant: £20,000

Working with young people who have a parent in prison, a grant of £20,000 will enable the charity to launch a vital new initiative aimed at improving the financial stability of the families they support.

With the addition of a dedicated Economic Well-Being Advisor, we will be able to provide tailored guidance, resources, and support to help families navigate financial challenges, access essential services, and work toward long-term economic security.

This initiative will have a meaningful impact, empowering families to build stronger, more stable futures. We look forward to implementing this program and witnessing the positive changes it brings to the community.

Grant: £5,000

A grant of £5,000 will support the charity to launch a new group that will support young mothers. With the funds provided, the charity will be able to provide a venue that has an onsite creche, as these were barriers to attendance previously. We are encouraging the young mothers to visit other groups to recruit participants and have provided further training so that they feel comfortable doing so.

Throughout the process so far, one of the young mothers has now become a fully-fledged support facilitator for the organisation – she has grown so much in confidence and has additionally started an Open University course to study child development.

Grant: £6,500

Thanks to a grant of £6,500 championed by Tricia Castley, the Trust has supported property education for charities, with the Ethical Property Foundation (EPF), the UK’s only dedicated property advice charity serving the voluntary sector.

Over 100 charities will now receive free webinar education on hot topics such as: how to read a lease and negotiate with your landlord; basic premises management and how to do a risk assessment on a charity building. Each participant receives free follow-up guidance from EPF’s unique Ask a Property Expert service.

CEO Antonia Swinson, said:

"Tricia’s enthusiasm and support has been amazing, and we are so grateful to everyone at Forvis Mazars for this grant. We know that property confidence and knowledge soar after our webinars and make a tangible difference to the experience of staff, volunteers and local people using their building."

Grant: £15,096

Patsy Hallmey from DCF told us: 

"We were absolutely delighted to be a recipient of a major grant from Mazars Charitable Trust. The funding of £15,096 has enabled us to really expand our services to local children with disabilities. We can now host regular music therapy sessions, have started a new weekly stay and play group plus another group for children who cannot access school due to lack of a suitable placement. These sessions are tailored to each child's individual needs. We have also been able to invite external providers to put on incredible sensory session for our children who have profound and multiple learning difficulties (PMLD).

Due to this funding, we are now able to budget for future regular sessions and activities and have engaged speech and language professionals to deliver workshops for our early years provision plus a play therapist who will work with our most profoundly disabled children. 

Your support has already had a major positive impact on our children who felt different, restricted and isolated who now have wider access to fun and friendships. The most beautiful thing your grant has done for us is allowing our children to flourish and grow in confidence."

Grant: £8,453

A grant of £8,453 will support the charity’s weekly wellbeing lunches. Every Thursday at The Eric Liddell Community the charity welcome anywhere from 30 to nearly 40 people, where they enjoy a free, healthy and homemade meal prepared by an in-house chef, who is a qualified nutritionist.

While the lunch is open to everyone, ELC primarily work with the most vulnerable in the community: older people with limited mobility, people living with dementia, people who are caring full-time for someone with a serious condition, and people who are struggling financially.

But the lunch is so much more than just a meal. It’s a chance for people to share stories, laughter and experiences with others who are facing similar challenges. It is also a critical point of entry into the charity’s other support services, like the open-community activities or comprehensive wellbeing programme for unpaid carers.

Grant: £12,500

The Trust granted £12,500 to Escape for educational programmes supporting young people in the Northeast who have suffered adverse childhood experiences including substance misuse and domestic abuse.

Many of the young people that Escape supports are living in households where their parents or siblings are suffering with an addiction to drugs, alcohol, or both. This negatively impacts on their mental health and wellbeing, and the therapeutic programme helps young people to understand their trauma, builds their resilience and provides better coping strategies.

The grant funding from Mazars Charitable Trust has been instrumental in ensuring the sustainability of this much-needed young people project throughout 2025/26.

Funds will be used to support disabled and neurodiverse children and young people aged 16-25 in London with employability skills training with the aim of assisting them to get into paid work.

AFK’s service consists of ‘aspiring and preparing for work’ sessions for those still in education and ‘into work’ bespoke assistance for those who have finished education. The MCT grant will specifically fund the work of an employment coach, who puts a personalised plan in place for young people, which matches their goals and career aspirations.

The grant will go towards supporting those furthest from the employment market in Glasgow and Edinburgh by providing one-to-one key worker support to help young people develop their individual learning plan which addresses barriers they need to overcome to focus on employability (e.g. poor mental health, referral to access/sustain specialist support, social isolation etc.).

This is complemented by a group programme of classroom-based delivery, allowing participants to achieve the Listening, Reading, Speaking and Writing Units of the SQA Core Skills & Communication Award. 

Growth Path Services supports young people aged 16 – 29 who are not in education, employment or training to achieve work experience, entry level qualifications and employability skills.

Their aim is to help young people break the cycle of poverty by becoming independently capable of supporting themselves.

Funding from the Trust will support young people on the ‘Introduction to Construction’ course in Birmingham, helping them to gain employment in the construction sector.