The MVMF works to enable vulnerable people from all walks of life to turn their lives around.
We do this by funding, initiating and commissioning projects that allow:
- disaffected or marginalised individuals to gain confidence and life skills and feel part of the society they live in.
- young people to use education and sport to open up an alternative future or simply offer a place to spend their free time and discover a new outlook.
- offenders to be rehabilitated, both in prison and on release, teaching transferable skills that give confidence and emotional support, decreasing re-offending and creating second chances.
- homeless people and the long term unemployed to develop new skills, find work, and feel valued.
We also do this with no large endowment behind us. Every penny we spend, we have to raise first. So we host fundraising events, and alongside this we seek donations from individuals, corporates and trusts, to enable our work to continue.
Believing in the power of the collective purse, we offer those who support us the opportunity to fund a greater breadth and number of projects than they would ever be able to support individually. In the four years since we founded our charity, we have fostered partnerships with other like-minded organisations, partnerships that extend beyond a simple funding relationship. Projects delivered by and with The Watts Gallery, Fine Cell Work, The Mayday Trust, The Koestler Trust and The Schutz Engel Trust are all examples of how combining expertise, contacts and funding makes our supporters’ money go further.
We are responsive, we get involved, and we make connections. In short, we do what we say we will. We are small, entirely volunteer run, and passionate, working in the name of Michael Varah, who echoed Churchill’s conviction that “there is treasure, if you can find it, in the heart of every man”.
