Wolverhampton community groups offered £1,000 to get hard-to-reach communities vaccinated
Community and voluntary organisations in Wolverhampton can claim £1,000 for supporting the Covid-19 vaccination programme.
More than 30 local groups have applied to the Community Vaccine Fund, which tackles vaccine hesitancy in communities with low vaccine uptake and support residents to get jabbed.
Successful applicants will need to demonstrate how their planned initiatives will help increase vaccination uptake among their users or in the wider community.
Wolverhampton’s director of public health, John Denley, said: "The Community Vaccine Fund is enabling us to improve engagement with our communities where Covid-19 vaccine uptake is at its lowest.”
Additional payments of £35 will be given to organisations for every person who receives a jab through their initiative.
Registered organisations can apply for funding by visiting wolverhampton.gov.uk/getwolvesvaccinated. The closing date for applications has been extended to Thursday June 30.
TLC College in Dunstall, which has reached over 100 people with its Covid-19 vaccination promotional project, received a grant.
A spokesperson said: "We have been delivering this valuable message through our ESOL classes, employability workshops, social media, leaflets, staff and family interventions, and used bilingual staff to speak to our diverse service users.
"We have had many interesting discussions, faced some sceptical and uninformed viewpoints as well as real vaccination fear and some genuine medical issues. Our interactions have remained respectful and amicable, regardless of individual beliefs and the weight of our factual knowledge is slowly but surely changing perceptions within the community."
