The penultimate Guiseley Community Foundation Newsletter of the year is packed full of news as they enter the busy Christmas period. 

Resilience Fund

Guiseley Community Foundation were fortunate enough to receive a grant from the Leeds Community Foundation Resilience Fund which allowed us to continue our work throughout the first national lockdown.

For much of this time the Foundation needed to furlough its staff, but many took the opportunity to work voluntarily for local organisations such as the Aireborough Children’s Centre.

This included delivering food parcels and collecting shopping for the elderly. In order to increase our resilience, we are going to use this funding to address problems that we encountered during the pandemic.

This includes investigating digital provision so as to allow remote delivery of sessions where a physical presence is not possible. Other issues include office space, which we are already addressing as we are operating out of Yeadon Westfield Junior School on a trial basis. Hopefully, as things return to normal the Foundation can resume Fund Raising and reinstate our popular Beer Festival and Golf Day in 2021. By working with other local charities, we are looking to provide a better service in schools, charities, churches and sports clubs at a lower cost.

Extra Day of Holiday Camps

Due to popular demand there is an extra day of Holiday Soccer Camps on December 29th, from 10am until 3pm. The cost of the day is £10 and all Covid procedures will be in place. There are limited spaces so please email alison.leigh.gcf@gmail.com to avoid missing out.

Toy Appeal Success

Everybody at Guiseley Community Foundation would like to say Thank You to everyone who generously donated to our first Christmas Toy Appeal in partnership with Guiseley Morrisons. Toys are already being distributed via the Aireborough Children’s Centre, which will make a huge difference to local children during the Festive period.

Generous Donation

We would like to say a huge ‘Thank You’ to Dan Hazell for his very generous donation to the Foundation via the Give As You Earn charity foundation. It will be put to good use supporting one of our future projects.

Food Donations Making a Difference

We have a received a lovely email from a parent of a child at Rufford Park school detailing how beneficial our weekly food donations have been to their family. The tinned products we leave in the bike shelter weekly have had a massive impact on their household this year, especially as their work has been disrupted heavily. It means so much to this family and many more that they know the Community Foundation and the local supermarkets are helping the school and other organisations.

Merry Christmas

The team at Guiseley Community Foundation would like to wish everyone a Happy Christmas. We also want to thank our funders, sponsors and everyone who took part in our sessions this year- your support throughout these difficult, unprecedented times has been incredible.