The ongoing increase to food is making it harder for Choices Community Shop to maintain a full range of produce. The grant will allow for the current range of products to be continued, especially through the depth of winter, when people have to choose whether to heat or eat. 

Our older community of people are reliant on Choices Community Matters and we want to ensure that can have at least 3 good meals from what they purchase so this funding will go on the purchase of food to ensure that choice, value and dignity are preserved. Tackling food insecurity is our way of reducing poverty in our immediate community.

Food (tinned, frozen and fresh) £1000 made up of:

Ambient Food (soups, hotdogs, potatoes, peas, sweetcorn,tea, coffee, sugar, juice, stews, curry, pasta, pasta sauce, rice) - £500

Frozen Food (Veg, ready meals, chips, pizza, fish, sausages etc) £250

Fresh (milk, eggs, cheese, mince, chicken. yoghurt, ) £250

Prices in supermarkets vary so an exact order is difficult to price until the day of the order. However, tinned and long life products will make up the main purchase of the foods.

To reinforce the annual school visits it is intended to produce a workbook for each pupil take away with them as a reminder of their visit.

In relation to the verse speaking “Champion of Champion” event funding is sought to provide trophies for those pupils nominated to represent their schools and performing their chosen poem.

It is intended that there will be three categories, Primaries 1-2, Primaries 3-4 and Primaries 5-7.

There are 11/12 Primary Schools in the Irvine Area, and it is hoped that all would participate.

Those nominated by their schools are also eligible to compete in the Ayrshire Association of Burns Clubs Schools’ Competition held later in the year.

We seek funding towards the printing costs of the workbooks (£500) and the purchase of 36 trophies at a cost of £20 each (£720) a total of £1220.

With the funding, we hope to host 2 networking events to attract members to join the community council. The community council works in partnership with several other voluntary organisations across Irvine such as Friends of Redburn, Fullarton Community Association, Marymass Festival Committee and others to run events in the locality and generally foster good relations between groups. By hosting these network meetings, we hope to attract new committee members who can increase our capacity to put on events and build community spirit between voluntary organisations.

The community council previously hosted the Irvine Yuletide event in 2023 which attracted around 10,000 people to Irvine moor. This gave families a chance to take part in free festive activities at a time of year when the cost of living hits hardest. If we can attract new volunteers to the community council, we will be able to put on more events similar to this, bringing people together and creating positive change in the community.

Costing as follows: 2 events 6 months apart

Rent of venue - £200

Promotion, including paid for advertising social media £100

Catering £700 (2 events, 70 people, £5 a head.)

TOTAL - £1000

Trindlemoss Day Opportunities is based in Irvine. Trindlemoss aims to transform community attitudes to better support and promote opportunities for people with learning disabilities and address mental health. We will help individuals share their strengths and skills with the community and encourage recognition for their input.

Throughout all our work, we stay focused on our customers, and the relationships that support and enrich them.

The group would like to organise social events in the evenings to utilise the building in the evening and invite parents, carers, family and friends to participate monthly to begin with to meet up with a long-term goal of making it a weekly meet up depending on how many family and friends would like to support this .

This would encourage a peer support group where the adults with learning disabilities would have the opportunity to meet up with their friends and socialise in the evening. The group would also give parents and carers, family and other care supports the opportunity to make friends and meet up with other parents and carers and support workers who support people with learning disabilities.

Trindlemoss also have residents who would also benefit from social events it would give them the opportunity to meet their neighbours.

The criteria we meet is Health and Wellbeing as Friends of Trindlemoss would promote physical and mental wellbeing the project would address social isolation, bring the community together.

The people who reside in the houses have mental health and learning disabilities so we also hit the criteria for building community spirits as we want to create a venue that is also an environment that they know. We also have other groups who use our building like Healing Hearts who have also shown an interest in volunteering, befriending, and helping  at Friends of Trindlemoss community events.

We would like to hold social events in the evening as winter is nearly here our Focus group have asked if we can put in for funding for the following items. With the following items we can have the oppertunity to fund raise ourselves and have games nights, bingo nights and fun nights. 

 Wireless  PA System - £200

pool table - £420

Curryoke Night - £260  Social event for 80 people (Curry, poppodoms, Rice) Pizza's for non curry lovers & refreshments for Tikka Bar

Entertainment  DJ - £100

Our voluntary group aims to promote social inclusion, mental health and wellbeing, physical activity and community service. We promote these aims within the group and, through our activities, to improve accessibility Eglinton Park's core pathways for all users.

Our work is in addition to, and  goes above and beyond, the routine maintenance and repairs of the park as provided by Streetscene and North Ayrshire Ranger Service.

Our aim is to continue to improve the work that we are doing around Eglinton Park and also to grow our group. To be able to do this we need to replace existing worn out tools and upgrade our toolset to improve our offering to all users of Eglinton Park's core pathways and the community of North Ayrshire.

We are applying for funding to help us to promote the aims of the group as noted.

Tools that would help us to achieve our aims, with associated costings:-

Galvanised Wheelbarrow (x3) £270

Cordless Chainsaw (x1) £200

Ratchet Lopper Shears (x5) £150

Digging Spades (x5) £90

Round Spades (x5)  £90

Extendable Tree Lopper (x1) £60

Heavy Duty Brushes (x3) £75

PPE, Gloves/Goggles (x12) £60