Thousands of school children across the UK will benefit from a new grant programme which will provide £5 million in grants to help give them a healthier, more active, stronger start in life.

In the first year over 1000 Scottish schools, organisations and charities will be awarded funding to get pupils the nutritious food they need throughout the school day and resources to keep them physically active with new sports and play equipment or outdoor activities.

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The grants are administered by Groundwork who are working with our team at greenspace scotland to support applicants and successful projects in Scotland. The scheme will replace the current Tesco Community Grants funding programme. It will focus on getting schools who lack funds and resources, to apply for extra financial help they might need to provide healthy food and activities that boost young people’s mental and physical wellbeing.

Schools, organisations and charities will be able to apply via Groundwork for a grant of up to £1,500 that can go towards activities that focus on providing food to pupils such as fruit for breakfast clubs or snacks to enjoy throughout the day and activities or equipment for outdoor and indoor fun.

Successful applications will go to a customer vote in their local Tesco store. Two out of the three blue token voting boxes by the checkout will be dedicated to local schools with the third given over to local community projects nominated by each store’s colleagues. Customers can then choose which of the three projects they’d like to support by voting with a blue token.

The initiative will also be boosted by Tesco’s ‘Golden Grants’ events, that saw it give away £1 million last year to mark reaching £100m worth of grants awarded to local communities through the Tesco Community Grants Fund. In 23/24, Tesco will award 200 x £5,000 ‘Golden Grants’ to schools and local projects.

This month also saw Tesco publish its Community Impact Report. Since its Community Grants programme launched in 2015 it has awarded over £100 million in funding to more than 50,000 community projects, with grant awards decided by 700,000 votes cast by Tesco customers in stores across the UK.