Bringing new hope and life

HAVE you ever had an idea for a project that you thought would be good for your local congregation or community: an idea that would bring new hope and life to a situation you care about, but you just didn’t have the resources to get it going?

If that’s the case, you may be interested to learn about the Claremont Trust.

The Claremont Trust, although a trust with quite modest resources, aims to assist small, innovative projects of Christian witness, renewal and social action in their very early stages of development before they can obtain financial help from the churches or other sources.

The Trust was established on July 31 1948 in the aftermath of World War II by three brothers, Alistair Paton Forrester- Paton, the Reverend Colin Forrester-Paton and Douglas Shaw Forrester-Paton, with an acute awareness of the suffering and moral turmoil of that time and of the challenges facing the Church. The brothers belonged to a wealthy family with a strong tradition of philanthropy. In that spirit, they considered their personal financial situations and decided that as they had more than enough to comfortably live on, they would set some aside in a Trust which would support radical and constructive enterprises, both within and outside the Church: enterprises which would give practical expression to the Christian gospel in the life of society.

The Trust is ecumenical and was founded on strong convictions of Christian social responsibility. It welcomes applications from any faith group. The Trust also supports the initiatives of groups that are working towards a fairer and more just world. Its resources are comparatively slender, and it distributes around £10,000 each year in grants. A typical grant will be £500 – £600 and not more than £1,000.

Constructive and radical enterprises that work towards a fairer and more just world are its priority. The following examples from 2019 give some idea of the work that continues to be supported by awards from the Claremont Trust:

• The Trust awarded a grant to Gorbals Men’s Shed for start up carving tools.

•A grant was given to help purchase and adapt a minibus to provide a safe, comfortable, and mobile space for the pastoral and spiritual support of vulnerable refugees and migrants living rough in Calais. These include minors, the ill and the traumatised. The bus is being maintained, driven and used by volunteers from Maria Skobtsova House (a Christian community in Calais whose mission is to be prayerfully present with and amongst refugees), and by the newly appointed Church of England Chaplain to refugees in Pas de Calais.

• The Trust made a donation to Street Connect which supported ecumenical partnership working with local churches in a number of deprived areas. This enabled local support to disadvantaged groups – particularly those affected by drug and alcohol addictions and related issues. Through that project local churches have reached out to their local communities with a constructive ecumenical approach.