Charity given a £500k boost (From Cotswold Journal)

Charity given a £500k boost

12:00pm Saturday 28th July 2012 in News

A CROPTHORNE charity working with vulnerable people around the globe has been given a grant of nearly half a million pounds to fund its next life-changing project.

APT Action on Poverty, which receives all its funds through charitable donations, will use the Big Lottery Fund grant of £472,754 to transform the lives of victims of civil war in Sri Lanka, with many having been disabled by land mines or badly injured by fighting in the conflict.

The four-year project will aim to reduce the poverty and discrimination facing both disabled men and women by giving them training and helping them find employment in an area of the country which was ravaged by the civil war which came to an end in 2009. The charity has been working in Africa and South East Asia since 1984 and currently has 11 projects in countries including Kenya and Sierra Leonne.

Andy Jeans, chief executive, said the latest project was due to start in September.

He said: “We are very pleased to get the grant. We have been working in Sri Lanka for a number of years and the situation has changed recently.” The charity worked in the south of the country by helping people find jobs and training between 2005 and 2010. Mr Jeans said: “The project was very successful and we hope to extend our experience of helping them. But this next project will be quite different as the eastern area of Sri Lanka is still recovering from the civil war.

“Disabled people in Sri Lanka are treated as those needing charity and to be cared for and young disabled people are not sent to school.

“During our programme in the south we had around 200 deaf women who got jobs in garment factories. The project trained the factory foreman in sign language to they could communicate with the women. It was a revelation for them as they have been kept at home before.”