One of our largest place-based grants in our 24-27 strategy is at work right now up in Helensburgh – where RNRMC is leading work to bring together a huge range of activities and support to the submariner community, families and children living and working in one of the most remote sites in the Navy.
On a recent visit for our CEO, Anna Wright, a visit to see the project in action was a return to where her military career began. She shares what that journey brought back: the everyday realities of service family life, and what meaningful support can look like when it truly meets people where they are.
Full circle moments don’t come around very often.
And as a funder, one of the things we hear a lot from grant partners is that they sometimes feel like they’re simply going around in circles: working to respond to the most complex of health and social issues, trying to sustain outcomes beyond the funding envelope they’re working in.
But as we prepare to develop our next strategy for the Covenant Fund’s grant making (opens an external link), I had the chance over the last month to return to a place which has rather a lot of ‘full circle’ meaning for me, both personally and professionally: Helensburgh.
From the personal perspective, I had my first job at the Clyde Submarine Base. I was a terrified probationary Third Officer WRNS (which completely gives my age away). I later had our second child at the Vale of Leven Hospital when my husband was working there, and I was juggling little ones. My lived experience of serving and of being a family member in Scotland is somewhat out of date, but it does give me a great deal of empathy for the families there today.
Professionally, Helensburgh is also the place which inspired some of the place-based work we’ve done under our current strategy. Two years ago, the Royal Navy and Royal Marines Charity (RNRMC) convened a workshop in Helensburgh with us and Greenwich Hospital – bringing charities, funders and the serving community together to talk about the challenges and unique nuances of family life in one of the most remote serving outposts of the UK.
