Early Years Grants Programme 2024-26

Grants of up to £40k to support early years education projects in the London Borough of Lewisham.

The Programme aims to support organisations to provide or increase access to early years development opportunities for young children* from low income households in Lewisham through

• expanding their existing reach or current work and/or
• testing a new approach that has been shown to work elsewhere

Young Children refers to children aged 0-3 years, though we will consider supporting projects working with children up to 5 years if sufficient need / impact can be demonstrated.

We are aiming to support projects that offer activities to help a child’s development in at least 1 of the 7 areas of learning within the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) and/or improve young children’s access to such opportunities.

The seven areas of learning within EYFS are

• communication and language
• personal, social and emotional development
• physical development
• literacy
• mathematics
• understanding the world
• expressive arts and design

We are looking to support projects that provide opportunities and activities for young children from low-income households.
In general we would anticipate most projects would use eligibility for free school meals as a measure, however if applicant organisations use a different measure already that they see as more valid, we are happy to have that explained in the application and used for the project.