The Eastside Primetimers Foundation

The Eastside Primetimers Foundation (The Foundation)

The Eastside Primetimers Foundation supports social entrepreneurs and innovators who are working to help individuals to overcome the barriers they face to learning, volunteering or employment. The Foundation provides these entrepreneurs with access to additional skills and experience through a mentoring and network model, and with seed funding.

The Foundation is funded from a variety of sources including income from Eastside People and donations.

The Foundation’s current priorities:

Breaking barriers to learning – Grants towards a Masters degree is Charity Management

We want to make the charity sector more attractive to talented young people as a place to work and forge a career. We do this through funding students who face economic and related barriers to study for a charity sector Masters degree. Currently, we are part-funding 2 students a year through the Charities Master’s course at Bayes Business School, City, University of London and we are keen to receive applications from students from disadvantaged backgrounds or who face cultural or related barriers.

Applicants must have a first degree and around 3 years’ experience.

For more information about the programme and how to apply, visit the Foundation’s website.

They are seeking funding to increase the number of students and to encourage new courses in parts of the UK where these do not exist.

Breaking barriers to employment  – supporting refugees to restart their careers

The Foundation is also supporting a social entrepreneur who is trialling a new way of helping refugees who have a professional or managerial background to restart their careers in the UK. The pilot scheme, which is in collaboration with a refugee and asylum seeker support charity in Swindon, Wiltshire, brings together mentoring, networking and targeted financial support. It uses skilled and experienced volunteers to deliver the programme, which has already had some notable success.

Developing social innovators in schools

They work with school leaders and students to co-create and support projects that have a positive social impact and play a part in improving understanding of the world of charities and social enterprises. These student-led projects can benefit from small grants accompanied by expert advice from volunteers from the social and business sectors. This short video is an example of their work with a school in Ilford.

Breaking barriers to volunteering intelligently

The Foundation’s website is also an important source of advice for individuals who are looking to invest some of their time volunteering in the social sector. This advice is based on 20+ years’ experience of helping individuals make a career change into the sector. As a Foundation they favour projects that draw on the untapped potential of skilled volunteers.

“Our goal is to help social innovators and entrepreneurs access the skills and experience that will benefit their project or idea, drawing on a range of collaborators with whom we have close links, such as Eastside People.” Brent Thomas, Trustee