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The Siobhan Dowd Trust aims to support children and young people whose access to books and stories has been deprived.
We asked director Kate Powling how it’s helping schools to promote reading…
Q
What is the Siobhan Dowd Trust?
A The Siobhan Dowd Trust is a small charity set up with the
stated aim of ‘bringing books to the children who need them most’. The charity was established by the author Siobhan Dowd, who died in April 2007, aged just 47. In her final days, Siobhan set up this trust to use the proceeds of her work to fund reading projects for children. Siobhan wrote four children’s novels and one novella for adults. The trust benefits from the sale of these books, as well as two books written by other authors (Patrick Ness’s A Monster Calls and The Guggenheim Mystery by Robin Stephens) that are based on Siobhan’s ideas.
Q
How does the Siobhan Dowd trust benefit schools?
ASchools are one of the main beneficiaries of our grants. In
the past we have funded various schemes, but have recently started to favour funding books rather than building projects. We are currently running a scheme where we give schools the funds to take pupils to a local bookshop and choose books for their school. Teachers and booksellers are allowed to influence pupils’ choices, but we want the ultimate decision to be down to the children so they can experience the art of browsing and feel some ownership over the final selection.
30 AUTUMN 2018 FundEd We have pledged to give away
£2,000 per month. Last year, 371 schools entered and shopping sprees were awarded to 34 primaries, 14 secondaries and seven other groups. The project is now in its third year, and our trustees have committed to fund the scheme until the end of 2019. Although this is our main project, we are open to looking at unique applications from a school if the idea is sufficiently innovative.
Q
How does the application process work?
AIn accordance with Siobhan’s wishes, our funding process is
very open, flexible and, we hope, simple. For a spree grant, applicants should send a short email to me (
director@siobhandowdtrust.com) explaining what you do to encourage a love of reading in your school. We’re not looking for lots of educational information about progress, but rather a passion for reading. Insights and anecdotes about young readers work well to demonstrate this. We appreciate there is a great deal of need, and we want the grant
‘The children wanted to borrow the books they’d chosen, meaning the
reluctant readers are now more engaged with reading’
submission to detail what you plan to do to address this need, and what impact a grant would have. We also ask you to provide your
school’s FSM and PP figure as a percentage, as this helps us inform our decisions. A low number isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as we know those schools have less funding. Applicants don’t apply for a specific amount, as we allocate funds based on our analysis of the situation. For grants other than a spree, you
are welcome to email a brief outline first to see if your project is the kind we may fund. I then assess it and follow it up with a phone call if it sounds like something we may be interested in supporting. Our trustees meet three times
throughout the year to consider grant applications, and while we do consider applications at other times, we always prefer to meet up to discuss projects. We ask for all funding applications to be in three weeks before we meet. Our trustees include members of Siobhan’s family as well as prominent children’s writers.
Q
What makes a successful application?
AFirstly, enthusiasm and commitment – this always
shines through in the applications we fund. We always need the school to have committed something, too. We know school budgets are tight,
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