About Us

Trustees

We have seven trustees who work together, willingly sharing their many years of expertise, qualifications, and experience to further the aims of the charity, and particularly the families we support.

(From left to right)... Christina, Lauren, Kieran our Chairperson, Audrey, Lesley, Tasha, and Terry

Community Projects Today

The pandemic years changed everything for us and were a time of exceptional growth. In fact, our many emergency projects gained us The Sevenoaks District Charity Project of the Year Award.

Ever since, we have gone from strength to strength and today, our award-winning community projects support approximately 115 local families plus many other isolated adults through a series of initiatives that include a summer trip to the seaside, Christmas pantomime, family-based swimming parties, food poverty, emergency hardship, wellness, Christmas hampers, educational laptops, and many more.

(Individual project reports are available on request)

We also act as referral agents for larger organisations which include Colyer Ferguson Charitable Trust, Kent Community Foundation, BBC Children in Need (Emergency Essentials Programme), KCC Household Support Fund, Cash for Kids, Family Holiday Charity etc.

In the last few years alone, we have helped our families access thousands of pounds worth of hardship grants, food/fuel vouchers, carpets, curtains plus white goods including beds, cookers, washing machines and tumble dryers.

Registration is via a simple form (download below). For a paper version please contact us.

Community Projects Registration Form 2025.pdf

Community Projects Registration Form 2025

Mentorship

We were fortunate in the beginning and, when we needed help, we received free training and support through a mentorship project run by Kent Community Foundation which was also in its infancy. We now run the same scheme providing practical support, advice, and guidance to smaller local groups, covering formal paperwork, policy writing and ongoing fundraising support.

(further information on supported groups is available on request, via email)

Future

In the spring of 2024 we proudly announced that we had finally reached the end of our 23-year long refurbishment of Holcot, everything had been done and the games hall ‘future-proofed’. In fact, the majority of our fundraising efforts are now focused on our work within the local community.

For everyone that has been involved in this mammoth task, it has been pretty constant ... carpets (twice), beds (three times), furniture (twice), curtains (twice), all the windows (some twice), wetroom (twice), kitchen, bathrooms, laundry room, doors, upgrades to the heating, woodworm treatment, ballcourt (construction & repairs), constant work on the games hall, not to mention large items of games equipment and two storage sheds! The list is endless! So much fundraising, so many projects and quite literally hundreds of thousands of pounds later we really have accomplished everything that our original trustees set out to achieve.

So what of our future? We often hear how the pandemic years and subsequent cost-of-living crisis have changed the way charities operate forever and many fantastic organisations failed or simply could not manage to continue the wonderful work they did previously. However, for us, since the beginning of the pandemic, we have seen unprecedented growth, specifically in the area of our award-winning community projects.

As a registered charity our trustees accept it is their responsibility to constantly review our relevance and, early in 2023 we ‘tweaked’ our name to recognise this slight change in focus. However, it soon become obvious that our future growth clearly lies within our community projects and, shortly before Christmas 2024, the trustees decided a more appropriate name was needed. After much deliberation it was decided to go back to our roots and honour the memory of the woman whose determination, vision, love for her fellow man and strong sense of right & wrong, started it all and so we became The Frances Andrews Memorial Trust - FAM Trust for short.

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