Breathing Space - the LBC’s Compassion in Action project - wins major grant

The London Buddhist Centre (LBC) has been awarded a £50,000 grant by the City Bridge Trust, which gives money from the City of London to charitable projects benefiting the inhabitants of Greater London.

This grant is for accessibility works in the basement, where the LBC will run its Breathing Space health and wellbeing programme. Specifically, this will include a lift going from the ground floor and a disabled toilet in the basement. This is – as far as the LBC is aware – the biggest single grant it has ever received. The work will create a beautiful new venue for courses that help people who've struggled with depression, addiction, stress and chronic pain to look after their own mental health. This will also give them the opportunity of making the LBC much more flexible – so they can attract a more diverse range of people.

Maitreyabandhu, Breathing Space Project Director, said: “It’s a fantastic endorsement from a very well respected grant-making body for what we are trying to achieve with our Breathing Space programme – helping prevent people from relapsing into depression and addiction, and reaching out to more people in East London.”

The creation of the new Breathing Space in the basement of the LBC is just one part of the programme of building works taking place next year, ahead of the LBC’s 30th anniversary.

The LBC team is currently having intensive fortnightly progress meetings with its architect and team of building experts. It is also carrying out extensive health and safety planning. The target for the building work to start is Spring 2008, with completion by the end of that year.

The LBC will be holding a Mandala Evening on Thursday 6 December at 7.15pm, which will be a chance for people to see all the finalised plans – including drawings and computer generated photos – for the building programme.

Clear Vision awarded grant

The Clear Vision Trust has been awarded a grant to make Buddhist materials for Buddhist teenagers in England and Wales.

Clear Vision, the FWBO's audio-visual media project, was awarded £24K in the latest round of Home Office grants made through the Faith Communities' Capacity-Building Fund. This fund promotes initiatives in two areas: activities developing relationships between two or more different faiths; and activities developing individual faith groups' capacity to serve the wider community.

Clear Vision's grant will be used to make audio-visual study materials for young people, looking at issues related to citizenship and community cohesion from Buddhist perspectives.

Clear Vision education officer Munisha said this represented an exciting new area of work for their team, building its capacity to serve the Buddhist communities at large. "So far all our work for young people has been for Religious Education in schools. But these new materials will be for individual Buddhist or other interested teenagers, at home or place of worship. We'll be consulting with Buddhists outside the FWBO, and the product will fill a distinct gap: apart from some American books, there is virtually nothing available for the teenager interested in Buddhism."

Thanks to the grant, the finished product will be available for use at home or Buddhist places of worship at a nominal price of around £4. Release date: spring 2008. A revised version will be developed for use in schools.

FWBO Projects Receive Community Funding

The UK government recently announced the results of round 2 of the ‘Faith Communities Capacity Building Fund’, which attracted bids from over 1,200 UK faith-based organisations. The funding was given to “groups with practical solutions to build capacity among faith communities to support inter faith work”. The successful applicants were the Brighton, Bristol, Birmingham, Cardiff, and Croydon FWBO Centres, the Clear Vision Trust, Dharmachakra (now known as Free Buddhist Audio), and the LBC’s Globe Community Project.

A full list of the 343 successful organisations is available online (pdf file). The fund is administered to the Community Development Foundation (CDF). FWBO News will be chasing up the recipients to find out how they will be using the money.

Story by Lokabandhu