Applications are now open for King’s Civic Challenge 2020/21, a unique opportunity for King’s students and staff to team up with local charities to help drive positive change.
As London recovers from the immediate impacts of COVID-19, King’s Civic Challenge aims to promote innovative responses to the challenges faced by communities in our home boroughs of Lambeth, Southwark and Westminster, embodying our commitment to serve, support and sustain the city where we make our home.
Now in its second year, the Challenge’s collaborative approach delivers fresh perspectives on issues affecting London and Londoners. From peer-support workshops to reduce loneliness among Lambeth’s informal carers, to enabling young people at risk of homelessness to find support, projects developed through King’s Civic Challenge have potential to make a lasting difference in our local communities.
This year’s Challenge will see local charities join students and staff at an online matchmaking event where they will connect with potential partners before forming project teams.
These teams will then work together to generate and refine their ideas, supported by a programme of training and workshops, before shortlisted teams pitch to win funding and make their ideas a reality.
In 2019/20, teams in the first ever King’s Civic Challenge explored issues including social isolation among people with learning disabilities and empowering young women through sport. Six winning teams each received £5000 for their charity to get their projects off the ground.
One of the winning projects was pitched by the Southwark Pensioners’ Centre team, which received funding for a community cookbook designed to address ‘barriers to belonging’ among Black, Asian and minority ethnic pensioners in Southwark. The project promises to bring together people young and old from the borough’s diverse communities to create healthy food while sharing stories of heritage, art and culture across the generations.
The project is currently being replanned for delivery in the context of COVID-19.
Staff and students are invited to discover more at events during November, then submit a short application by 10am on Monday 30 November 2020.
If you are a local charity or organisation interested joining King’s Civic Challenge, we would be delighted to hear from you. Please visit kcl.ac.uk/local or email local@kcl.ac.uk
