Choices Community Shop currently has over 500+ households registered to access a food with dignity approach to addressing food insecurity in the local area. With an equal divide of families, couples and single people, the cost of cooking food is a worry for everyone. With winter approaching and the cost of living ongoing, many households have told us that they are worried about whether they will be able to heat and cook this year. 

Choices Community Shop would therefore like to purchase food and containers to be able to prepare healthy, nutricious "ready meals" that households can take as part of the offer within the food larder. These meals will be suitable for heating in a microwave thus reducing the households cooking costs.

Food for meals: £800

Food Safe Containers: £200

About 2 months ago we started manually burning signs onto wood, which has proven to be a sucess with the community and we now wish to purchase a wood burning machine (PyroprinterX) to do a more professional job in a much quicker time, we will also need a laptop/ computer to run the softwear.

PyroprinterX and softwear £629.00 (including postage) plus £118 expected Inport Duty, as it is manufactured in Ukraine - £747.00

Laptop/ Computer approx £500

Total expected costs £1,247

Irvine Burns Club are seeking funding to provide trophies and book prizes for those pupils nominated to represent their schools at a “Champion of Champion” event held in Wellwood Burns Centre and Museum and demonstrate their skill in presenting their chosen poem. It is intended that there will be three categories, Primaries 1-2; Primaries 3-4 and Primaries 5-7.

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

If successful there they can go forward to perform at the Robert Burns World Federation National Festival. In the recent past several of our young people have been successful at this stage.

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

We seek funding to purchase 36 trophies at a cost of £20 each (£720) and 36 book prizes at a cost of £7.50 each (£270) a total of £990.

Any unused trophies and book prizes purchased would be held for use in following years.

BABCA who are a group of volunteers elected to run the Towerlands community Centre with assistance from the local authority have run family events in the area which have been very sucessful. This year BABCA wish to encourage adults and older people back into the centre for a free social event in the evening. The committee want to hold a Saturday evening event turn the centre into the wild west. We had a monkey survey and Country music won over the sixties seventies and eighties. The event date would be the 24th of February 2024 the live country band would be Stateline a local band which usually packs out local venues in the Irvine locality. The committe wish to have a free chuck wagon giving away pies and beans or mushy peas. The bar would also be run by Towerlands Bowling club who are another local club run by volunteers who are situated next to the Centre. We want people through the doors in February as we are trying to organise a Community and memorial Garden situated next to the centre and wish the Country and western evening event to promote the garden project and see if we can get volunteers to assist in the garden which we are in the process of trying to secure funding for. BABCA want to grow fruit and vegetables in the garden for their Community food larder the Farm Basket. We will also do some fund raising on the night for the larder  with raffles, cowboy bingo and a silver dollar so all the events feed into each other. The cost of our event is as follows

Stateline Country band £450   Pies Beans and peas paperplates knifes and forks tablecovers £200    Hall decoration Flags, bunting £150   hall let £94   tickets x100 flyers leaflets/posters £106

laguna 14/12 bandsaw bundle including bandsaw, 4 blades, mobility wheel kit and sliding mitre. Total cost incl delivery £1581.88, the excess being paid from Shed funds.

20 x tracksuits average £40 each 

5 x winter jackets average £40 each 

Total £1000

We are applying for funding to enable our group members to plan and experience a trip to the theatre and afternoon tea up in Glasgow in the new year.

Social activities such as this can have a genuinely positive impact of the health and wellbeing of older people.  This is especially true in the winter months when the cost of living and social isolation can have a significantly negative impact on people’s lives, especially for older members of the community.  This would be an opportunity for our group members to experience a special outing which many would not be able to access independently due challenges faced through physical health and mental wellbeing.

To enable us to do this we would use any funding we received for:

Transport to Glasgow: £160

Theatre tickets: £560

Afternoon Tea: £280

Musical instruments - £630.  Scanner / printer - £370  Total - £1000

Project supports health and well-being

Irvine and Dreghorn Brass has been in existence for c. 45 years and is a registered charity. We have 3 brass bands in our organisation and we provide opportunities for community members to learn music, play in a group and be entertained by music which has major health and well-being benefits for participants and audiences alike.

We perform at over 30 concerts and gala days each year and are seen by thousands of people. We also provide free music lessons and access to brass and percussion instruments for young people and adults. 

Part of the funding would be spent on instruments that enable more people to play. While we will require to spend more than £630 on buying new / nearly new instruments, we will look to fund this additioal spend via other sources. 

We would also like to buy a good quality printer / scanner. We often need to copy sheet music for our musicians to play and practice. Also we have a large library of sheet music, around 900 arrangements collected over our 40+ year existence, that we would like to digitise (scan). Parts of the sheet music often get lost or damaged and creating on-line copies would protect the music and enable us to print parts as required for our band rehearsals and classes.

Demand for our services is growing and our membership has grown 50% in the last year. Many people want to play in bands and community groups have us play at events.

We would like to host a community dinner for the wider Irvine locality with the aim to bring all the local groups representatives together and to conduct a discussion and survey to record what they feel the current issues are facing older people across Irvine.

The dinner will feature a keynote speaker on a topic related to current issues.

Breakdown:

• Hall hire £68.90
• Catering £800
• Table Settings, invitations & Decoration £100

Our project will be to purchase a new defibrillator which our community volunteers will use to provide lifesaving treatment to anyone who needs it on Irvine beach and as part of our community outreach projects. Volunteers will be trained how to use the defibrillator, increasing their existing skillset around first aid, increasing resilience and building their confidence to use the lifesaving piece of equipment.

Our volunteers benefit from reduced social isolation by volunteering at Coastwatch through the day and at weekends, benefiting their health and wellbeing. Having equipment such as the defibrillator is essential to providing that service for volunteers and the public. All our volunteers learn from each other’s varying experience and Coastwatch has a sense of community spirit among the volunteers, building positive relationships within the community.

Breakdown of costs:

Mindray C1A Semi-Automatic defibrillator - £1100

Coastwatch will subsidise the additional £100 from our own funds.