Displacement Education Fund

The fund, run by the British and Foreign School Society (BFSS), supports projects working with displaced children and young people in the UK and internationally.

Grants can be used to pay for a safe space to learn, adult support, learning in their own language and post-trauma support.

How much is available?

The BFSS has £1m to distribute through the fund. Each successful project can apply for funding over two years.

Registered charities and educational establishments can apply for a minimum of £10,000 and maximum of £60,000 over two years.

For organisations that are not registered charities or educational establishments, funding of between £10-20,000 is available over two years.

What restrictions are there?

The BFSS will fund between 25 and 100 per cent of the total project costs. However, for registered charities and education establishments, annual grant payments cannot exceed 50 per cent of an organisation’s three-year average income.

Funding is available for pilot projects or those started in the previous 12 months to meet a new area of need but grants will not retrospectively fund activities that have already taken place for existing projects.

There is an expectation that projects will supplement and enhance the government and local authority provision rather than replace it in any way, and applications will be expected to demonstrate how they are working in partnership with local authorities to supplement statutory support that may be available.

What is and isn’t funded?

The fund will support work that aims to improve access to educational opportunity (including further education or employment opportunities for those aged 16-25), or reduce barriers to achievement, for children and young people who are refugees or asylum seekers, unaccompanied children or children of undocumented migrants.

The BFSS will not usually fund services that are available through the state-sponsored education; ongoing projects, summer camps; bursaries or scholarships; expeditions, volunteering trips and conferences; international travel; feeding programmes; and projects where teaching staff salaries, transport or running costs are the main expense.

How to check eligibility

Grants are available for UK-registered charities, not for profit, community-based organisations and schools, academies, colleges and other educational establishments.

Registered charities should have an annual income of less than £2.5m, be financially sound and have at least three years of accounts.

Community-based organisations must have an annual income of under £1m, evidence of working in their local community and providing a public benefit and a constitution with at least three trustees.

Schools, academies, colleges and other educational establishments must be able to demonstrate a network effect beyond one individual school.

All organisations must be directly involved in the provision of the project activities. BFSS does not fund organisations whose primary purpose is fundraising.

Existing BFSS grant holders with an active main fund BFSS grant are eligible to apply for an additional grant from the Displacement Education Fund, on the condition that a progress report has been submitted and approved for their existing grant.

How to apply

Applications are received and reviewed on a rolling basis.

There is a two-stage application process:

1. All applications must be submitted using the relevant online application form and include a completed BFSS Budget Template. This does not need to be completed in one session; the form allows you to save your progress and return to complete the form in as many sessions as required within 30 days.

2. Shortlisted applicants will receive an electronic invitation to submit a stage two application form. At this point, applicants are asked to expand on the information given and require a project logframe to accompany this – a logframe is a document which helps BFSS to understand the changes a project aims to achieve and how it will do this.

More from: https://bfss.org.uk/grant-giving/displacement-education-fund/

Funding roundup

• The Youth Endowment Fund has opened applications for its A Trusted Adult funding round, providing up to £12.5m to fund and evaluate six to 10 projects in England and Wales. The Home Office-backed charity is looking to invest in projects that support children and young people who have been involved or affected by exploitation, crime or serious violence, by assigning them a mentor or key/case worker to act as a trusted adult.

• A £600,000 scholarship programme supporting University of Sussex students who have been in care is to be rolled out this academic year. The 10-year programme will be funded by the Rudd Family Foundation, which supports educational and youth activities in the US and UK.

• Funding has been awarded for a programme of free music-making activities, which aims to improve the lives of care-experienced children and young people in Darlington. A grant of £30,000 has been awarded by Youth Music, £1,500 from Creative Darlington and £1,500 from Darlington Borough Council, enabling Blue Cabin to deliver a programme of music for children and young people aged 0 to 17 in partnership with staff at Darlington Borough Council’s Fostering and Supported Lodgings team.

• The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport is providing £1.5m of grant funding for uniformed youth organisations to establish groups in deprived areas in England, currently underserved by uniformed youth organisations. An assessment panel, appointed by DCMS, will review bids from eligible organisations. The grant will provide resource funding only, to be utilised in the financial year 2022/23.