£740,000 awarded to organisations helping young Londoners reach their full potential
We’re really pleased to announce our latest round of grants for June 2026. This is the first round of funding under our new funding themes. We’ve awarded £740,000 to 20 impactful organisations on a mission to give young people opportunity and help them reach their full potential.
At The Portal Trust, we love seeing all the different ways that organisations are supporting young Londoners. Our new funded projects vary a lot in their size and focus, but they all share the same goal of breaking down barriers to education and helping young people grow.
Supporting a love of reading and literacy
Since 2026 is the National Year of Reading, we’re especially proud to be backing projects devoted to improving literacy and re-igniting children’s love of reading.
Our £65,000 grant to the National Literacy Trust’s Libraries for Secondary Schools programme will promote reading for pleasure through enhanced library provision.
Meanwhile, our £64,000 of funding for Read for Good’s ‘Inspiring Stories’ project will deliver books, storytelling sessions, and creative workshops to children in hospital settings.
We’ve also awarded grants of different sizes to the Tower Hamlets Schools Library Service for the Tower Hamlets Book Award (£5,230) and the Discover Children’s Story Centre for their Everybody’s Got Stories project (£40,000).
The award is about encouraging reading for pleasure and providing a range of diverse stories and voices that children may not have the opportunity to otherwise experience.
Jacob Turner
Tower Hamlets Schools Library Services
New ways to learn and create
We’re always excited to fund projects that find new ways to teach young people skills for the future, especially in a world that’s changing so quickly.
A great example of this is KIT Theatre’s Classbot V2. We’ve awarded £60,000 for their creative project that combines AI and coding education with creative learning activities. They use theatre, debates, coding workshops, and AI-themed activities to explore the opportunities and risks associated with artificial intelligence.
Similarly, we’ve funded ThreadPoint’s ‘Making the Internet Visible’ pilot, helping primary school pupils understand the invisible infrastructure behind the internet, cloud and everyday digital life through creative, age-appropriate STEM learning.
For many children, these buildings and systems feel invisible, even though they shape the world around them. This support helps us make that world easier to see, question and imagine themselves within.
Willow Williams
Founder - ThreadPoint Studio
Life skills in the outdoors
Learning shouldn’t just happen inside the classroom, and our latest grants reflect The Portal Trust’s longstanding commitment to sports and outdoor education. We’ve seen time and again how a holistic approach helps young people – especially those at risk of missing out - build confidence and work as a team.
That’s why we’ve awarded £30,000 to the AHOY Centre for their project, ‘On the Right Tack’ – an educational water sports programme designed to engage young people at risk of offending through structured maritime training.
We’re also funding the School of Hard Knocks for their Building Brighter Futures for London Children project. This sports-based intervention programme is tailored for young people at risk of persistent absence, suspension or exclusion from education.
Opening doors to new careers
We want to make sure talented young people get opportunities in careers that we know can be hard to break into. Our renewed funding for the JUSTICE and Portal Trust Internship Programme means the legal charity JUSTICE can continue to deliver structured internships for young people from underrepresented backgrounds, to support entry into the legal profession.
We’re also supporting the City & Guilds of London Art School for their Pathways into Creative Careers bursaries, giving disadvantaged young people the chance to study a Foundation Diploma in Arts & Design.
These are just a few of the wonderful projects we’re supporting in this funding round, and we can’t wait to see the positive impact they continue to have throughout London.
We want to hear from you
Are you working on a project that provides life-changing educational opportunities for young people in London? No matter the size or scope, we want to hear from you.
Take a look at our funding themes and full criteria on our Funding page.