The Nest, a community parenting space, celebrates after receiving National Lottery funding.
The Nest CIC based in Holmfirth, Huddersfield is celebrating after being awarded funding from The National Lottery Community Fund, the largest funder of community activity in the UK.
The Nest is a community parenting space based in Holmfirth Tech and it supports parental health and wellbeing both physical and mental, and early years development. Sessions delivered from their space are a mix of in-house such as stay and play, parent and child boogie, local non-profit sessions including messy/sensory play, volunteer groups such as the breastfeeding support group, and private business sessions.
The Nest has been set up by three mothers who have had very different parent journeys. All have experience of mental health challenges, facing post-natal depression, feeding challenges, birth recovery, loneliness, and isolation.
This new National Lottery funding will make a huge difference and will be used to pay The Nest’s lease and activity costs. The venue will now be able to increase capacity from eight sessions a week to sixteen and double the number of sessions delivered by The Nest to six. As well as offering a different range of sessions, it will mean that support specifically for adults will be introduced – postnatal yoga, sessions for Dads and LGBTQ parents for example.
National Lottery players raise over £30 million a week for good causes across the UK. The National Lottery Community Fund distributes a share of this to projects to support people and communities to prosper and thrive.
The community have already benefited from a session run by Laura Greenwood, a Psychotherapist and Maternal Mental Health Coach. She ran a session on maternal anxiety for new mothers and one of the attendees said:
“Personally, this is the most valuable session I have ever attended. I wish they were on weekly!” and “’After struggling for so long, you and the other mums gave me the understanding to come home and explain what is going on in my head. Thank you.”
Rebecca Trueman of The Nest said: “Thanks to National Lottery players, this grant means that we can support in excess of 500 people and will focus on parents feeling less lonely due to the connections made and nurtured at The Nest as well as parents feeling more confident in their own abilities as parents after sessions at and from peer support created by the community. This will make a big difference to people’s lives.”
During the pandemic, in 2020 alone, The National Lottery Community Fund distributed almost £1 billion to charities and community organisations across the UK.
To find out more about the funding visit www.TNLCommunityFund.org.uk
