Each year The Craven Trust gives grants to around 25 community projects across Craven and Keighley. It supports many varied and wide ranging projects and good causes, including children’s playgrounds and sports clubs to Sue Ryder Care Manorlands Hospice. Trustee Simon Robinson explains how people benefit, and invites groups to apply for funding.

IT can take a steely determination to get things done. Fortunately, Gargrave mum of two, Sarah Pawson, has it by the bucket load.

Five years ago, Gargrave playground was in a terrible state: “Play equipment had to be removed because it was unsafe, vandals had even set the play house on fire”, Sarah told me.

This left the village’s children with nowhere safe to play. Gargrave Parish Council, which is responsible for maintenance, didn’t have the money for repairs and so Sarah, together with a group of 12 mums decided to take the matter into their own hands.

“We started by trying to raise the money from a cake sale”, Sarah said - but they soon realised it would take an enormous number of fairy cakes and sponges to buy the equipment they needed. A major fundraising campaign was launched.

The first step was to create the vision and, for this, the mums involved the whole community. “We asked the views of all 137 children at Gargrave Primary School and the pre-school children at the Caterpillar Club”, Sarah explained. They held a public meeting at the church hall to get the input of parents and families, and the school children helped create a new design. Number one on the children’s list was a zipwire and the wider community wanted to ensure the equipment appealed to teenagers as well as younger children.

Armed with a bold new design, the mums could start fundraising in earnest. Sarah approached the Craven Trust for a donation, and the Trust was pleased to contribute £1,000 for a new roundabout. Other donations poured in, including from Yorventure, and not forgetting a vital £60 raised by the local brownies.

With money in the bank, work could begin. Unfortunately, midway through the project disaster struck, when a building contractor unearthed a major drainage problem that might cause the new playground to flood. Sarah told me it was the low point of the campaign and could have ended the project, but the mums were not to be defeated. Local companies, including Bentleys, RWS and Greentech, donated time and resources to fix the problem.

Finally, five years after deciding to take on the redevelopment themselves, the new playground has just opened. With much justification, Sarah told me “I’m relieved, excited and proud”. Together, we watched her children Hannah, four, and Harvey, six, bound off to play on the new equipment. They have every reason to be proud of their mum and her friends.

The Craven Trust is used to funding projects run by local community heroes and has twice donated to the redevelopment of Sedbergh People’s Hall, the abiding passion of Sedbergh resident, Dr Gina Barney. The name of the hall is no coincidence, it was built in 1956 ‘by the people, for the people’.

Over the last 10 years, Dr Barney has taken up the mantle and overseen an almost total redevelopment of the Hall, transforming the entrance area, building new toilets, changing rooms, a bar, a technical booth for shows and even incorporating the community gym.

Gina explained that most of Sedbergh’s 4,000 residents will use the hall during the year, whether through attending film shows, plays by the town’s two dramatic societies, dances, attending community groups, meetings or training a puppy. On the day of my visit, local MP, Tim Farron, was due to meet local residents in the hall.

The Craven Trust’s latest donation has helped to fund improvements to the outside area in front of the hall, including providing safer access for people in wheelchairs. Gina’s passion and vision has raised over £500,000 over the last few years for the redevelopment of the hall – and she’s not finished yet. “The roof needs replacing” she told me, and I sensed that the Craven Trust would be hearing from her again soon.

Far away from Sedbergh, it was one of the founding fathers of the United States, Benjamin Franklin who said: “Nothing in this world is certain, except death and taxes”. It is to the former of these that we must now turn.

The Sue Ryder Manorlands Hospice in Oxenhope, opened in 1974, thanks to the generosity of two more local heroes, Gordon and Monica Vestey, who donated their family home to care for people nearing the end of life.

Now, each year, the hospice supports 850 terminally ill people and their families, including many from across Keighley and Craven. Earlier this year, Manorlands Hospice approached the Craven Trust for a donation to help replace some of the pressure relieving mattresses for their 16 bed inpatient unit.

The mattresses need to be replaced every three years and, during that time, each will benefit multiple people, providing comfort at end of life and reducing the chances of people developing health complications from prolonged periods in bed. The Craven Trust was pleased to support the hospice’s request, contributing to the replacement cost of four mattresses.

Lizzie Proctor, director of Sue Ryder Manorlands, said “we are incredibly grateful for the support of the Craven Trust. It’s hard to overstate the importance of a pressure relieving mattress, this sort of specialist equipment can ensure someone spends their final days as comfortable and pain free as possible, which is our primary aim.”

The Craven Trust welcomes applications from community groups across Craven. and Keighley. If you have a community project needing support you can learn more by visiting the website: craventrust.org.uk, or you could contact the trust’s administrator, Rowena at enquiries@craventrust.org.uk or 07954 803327.

You can use the same contact details if you’d like to help the Craven Trust support more local people and projects, by making a donation or leaving a legacy.