5 July 2019

Coram Beanstalk has received a £150,000 grant from the Garfield Weston Foundation to help fund the delivery of its vital one-to-one reading support to more children across the UK. 

The Garfield Weston Foundation is a family-founded charitable grant-making foundation which supports causes across the UK with grants totaling over £60million each year. The foundation has been a committed funder of Coram Beanstalk for 20 years, giving a generous £500,000 during that time.

Philippa Charles, Director at the Garfield Weston Foundation, said:

“The Trustees are delighted to support Coram Beanstalk and hope the work of it’s great volunteers will inspire a new generation of children to develop joy in reading for both learning and pleasure.”

Ginny Lunn, Managing Director at Coram Beanstalk, said:

“Thank you so much to the Garfield Weston Foundation for this incredibly generous grant and for their continued support to us over the last 20 years. It has enabled us to develop and deliver new reading programmes to more children over the last two decades and this grant for £150,000 will mean we can continue to increase this reach even further over the next few years. As a charity we greatly rely on the generosity and support of funders, so thank you once again on behalf of everyone at Coram Beanstalk, our reading helpers and the children we support.”

In 2017-18, 156,000 children across England left primary school not having reached the expected standard in reading*. Not being able to read well, or being able to enjoy books, can have a devastating effect on a child’s future, holding them back at every stage of their life.

In the last academic year approximately 3,700 Coram Beanstalk reading helpers supported approximately 13,400 children to read well and confidently. In the next year the charity aims to reach 15,000 children through the help of 4,000 reading helpers.

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