Scran Academy among thousands of good causes to receive National Lottery funding

Edinburgh based Scran Academy is among thousands of good causes throughout the UK to share more than £1 billion awarded by The National Lottery during the last year.

Scran Academy

The funds were used for helping people and projects cope with the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic as well as help to protect the future of thousands of organisations across the UK.

John Loughton, 33, Scran Academy’s founder and chairman, has used the grant from The National Lottery Community Fund to deliver free hot meals to vulnerable people right across the city.

By rolling out an extensive support network across Edinburgh and working with local partners to ensure gaps in service were covered, the catering social enterprise significantly intensified its Edinburgh-wide meal production service when lockdown first struck and distributed 150,000 meals to over 3,500 people in the capital.

The organisation worked day and night to ease the challenges posed by lockdown for thousands of people, and their work prevented homeless people and families from going hungry.

John said: “The funding that came from The National Lottery was really critical in helping us build our city-wide Covid response network.

“The funding has helped us get equipped and set up our community meals programme. We got a pretty rapid grant – and because it came out so rapidly and we’re a small organisation steeped in our community, we became an anchor organisation really quickly. The National Lottery helped us respond to the pandemic.

“We started to grow very quickly since March and have doubled our numbers week in, week out. The funding helped us invest and keep going – it was a real endorsement. We’re not a big private organisation or big charity – it’s young people from disadvantaged backgrounds and key workers who are stepping up to volunteer.

“The National Lottery money at the beginning helped us invest in our commitment to keep going. It’s people in these communities running the programmes themselves – for us, it was the National Lottery money that enabled that to happen.”

Scran Academy is one of thousands of projects nationwide to have benefited from the £30 million raised by National Lottery players every week.

To find out more about how The National Lottery supports good causes throughout the UK, visit: www.lotterygoodcauses.org.uk

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