The Margate Early Years Community Fund (MEYCF) was launched in 2023, following high levels of engagement with similar funding made available to the local early years community in 2022 which had a huge impact for the recipient organisations and hundreds of local families. You can find out more about innovation projects previously funded and supported by MELC here.
The fund aims to invest in small-scale innovation that supports the local early years community to test and learn from a new approach to addressing a gap in existing local services, as well as to trial a new approach to service design and delivery that is community-led and supports long-term shifts in the local early years system, for the benefit of children and families. ‘Innovation’ in this context refers to a product or service (or an adaptation of an existing product or service) that can be measured in some way to understand its impact.