Choices Community Shop, based in the heart of Irvine, offers food with dignity to local people who are facing food insecurity due to the cost of living crisis. This fund would allow us to prepare healthy, nutricious "ready meals" for individuals removing the worry of the cost of cooking. Given that winter is approaching, families will have to choose whether to heat or cook and by having this offer, it lessens the stress of the worry.

At North Ayrshire Carers Centre we provide a tailored service for unpaid young and adult carers across the locality, we support individuals and families through their caring roles and provide a listening ear, support services, advice, and peer support groups. Not only this, we aim to support all unpaid carers within each locality within North Ayrshire, through locality events and drop-in support groups for carers. Within our service, we recognise the unseen roles and responsibilities unpaid carers take on for a relative, friend, or neighbor. Care can be provided in more simplistic ways such as helping with the weekly shop to cooking meals. Support is not restricted to physical care but can be also emotional support ranging from just giving a listening ear or taking care of their financial affairs or their own health. This project aims to create a community carousel in partnership with HSCP Carers Team, Youth Services, and KA Leisure to create opportunities within each locality. This will provide a family respite opportunity for unpaid carers accessing the service, or for individuals who may require support in benefit advice, education support, funding, carer support plans or a listening ear as we understand how demanding being an unpaid carer can be. This project will initially be rolled out in seldom-heard communities such as Garnock Valley and North Coast where we aim to provide support within our capacity to unpaid carers along with a fun day out for families to access activities and information based on their needs and abilities. This project will provide an opportunity to tackle isolation, food poverty, and fuel poverty by giving carers a safe, warm space to use for the day where they can bring their cared for, and also access a meal and refreshments along with the company of Carers Centre staff and partners.

Vennel Gardens Enterainment Committee aims to provide Vennel Gardens Residents and Community members with the opportunity to take part in trips, lunches and entertainment such as live performances within Vennel Gardens engagement hub.

After successfully securing PB funding last time, the group have delivered fantastic trips, lunches and many live entertainment performances. Many new friends have been made and created a fun social club that so many are benefiting from. 

Even the local doctors surgery are signposting people with dementia to our club.

As a community organisation and registered charity we provide facilities for men over the age of 18 years where they can socialise and take up new /continue with old hobbies. This helps with social isolation and also enables us to help the local community by making planters etc for local schools and private gardens. All of our products are much cheaper than commercial products as we do not charge for labour. Some of our power tools which were donated second hand are now coming to the end of their working life and we need to replace them bit by bit to continue with our projects.

We would like funding to purchase a new defibrillator to assist with our community resilience volunteer programme. Volunteers will learn how to use it, developing their skills and building confidence.

We are a local community youth football team, seeking funding to help our team of 20 players continue with their enjoyment of playing football.

BABCA would like to organise a Country and western Social evening to try and get older people and adults back into the way of attending social events in Towerlands Community Centre.We would like to organise a free evening event to encourage people to socialise. People have got in to the way of staying in their houses during covid we would like to invite people in the local area to an evening of Country music with a live band. We woud like to turn the centre into the wild west providing an evening of live music with a theme. This community event would bring people together and help people who have been social isolated meet new friends.  

We are seeking a grant to support the printing and production of cookbooks which will be given to families in need within the Irvine locality as a pilot to show them ways to have healthy meals at low cost.  We are hoping to  work in partnership with local community groups offering lunches or cooking classes, and can then be given away with participants.