Grants awarded in 2011

Please note that the grants scheme in place from 2009 to 2011 has been closed. Find out more about the new direction our Grants will be taking in 2012.

2011 saw the grants programme building further on the two previous years of giving, adjusting priorities in line with campaign strategies, but maintaining the same broad objectives in place since 2009.

While nothing radical altered, a pattern emerged this year to give the programme different characteristics. Projects had to include parents more than ever as this continued to be a pivotal element of our youth strategy. At the same time, they also had to include improvements to beneficiaries life skills, such as assertiveness and self-esteem, and not simply bombard them with facts, figures and corrections of popular myths.

Most importantly, however, it became critical that applicants had clear notions of project legacies and were able to present us with visions of what would happen upon successful delivery of their interventions. This means that recipients in 2011 demonstrated the ability to think long-term and did not see their grants as funding one-off pieces of work which would end the instant they submitted their evaluations.

If legacy was one byword, collaboration might have been the other. Drinkaware became far more willing to work proactively with successful applicants to ensure objectives were met and to maximise the benefits and impact of projects for all concerned.

To put this another way, successful applicants had clearly thought about just how much they wanted to deliver alcohol awareness work, carefully considering the future journey it might take, how it would be sustained and replicated, and showed a readiness to move the goal posts from time to time to derive every last ounce of impact. The greatest change this year would be the number of good projects which had to be turned down because the applicant was insufficiently far-sighted.

The successful initiatives included:

A small grant to Act On It which developed interactive workshops for primary school children, enabling participants to learn by acting out scenes according to instructions on cards
A midrange grant for Vita Nova towards Intensive, one-week workshop residentials, where participants learnt the facts, conversed with local practitioners and created their own drama sketches and artwork which they then performed and displayed at an event with other local schools on the final day of the project
A small grant to the Skye and Lochalsh Drug and Alcohol Partnership, which funded alcohol awareness raising workshops for younger senior school pupils in a remote region of Scotland where the risk of missing out on educational initiatives is always greater.

Page last updated by: Unknown, 10 May 2012.

Page checked on: 20 Jun 2011