Trinity Equality Fund awards 13 applicants

The fund focuses on equality issues relating to nine grounds of discrimination under Irish law

This year 13 out of 35 applicants have been awarded the Trinity Equality Fund. The fund, which awards small grants to projects from staff and student applicants who celebrate diversity in all areas of the university by enabling locally run initiatives. It has been running since 2008 and is specially geared towards providing funding for projects which otherwise would not receive any. The total budget to be divided amongst all the recipients was €10,000.

The fund focuses on equality issues relating to nine grounds of discrimination under irish law: gender, age, civil status, family status, race and ethnicity, membership of the traveller community, disability, sexual orientation and religion and belief. Initiatives concerning other diversity groups which contain relevance are also considered.

This year’s successful applicants included an ‘Equality Champions’ awards programme for clubs and societies, a speaker series on female scholars at risk around the world, an animated video series on LGBT issues, the development of an accessible research archive on the Trinity website, and other relating to themes such as age, religion, mental health, and returning to work or study following a long period of leave.

The themes for this year included ‘Diversity and participation in University life’, ‘Age and Inclusion’, ‘Cultures meeting in trinity’ and ‘Human and LGBT rights’. Last years successful applicants included a project that focused on opening up higher education to those living in care. Another project aimed at supporting students who were recovering from addiction.

The fund aims to impact the trinity community and in some cases Irish society as a whole by promoting grass-root projects to increase equality. The project also places a special emphasis on student and staff collaborations. The grants are awarded by a sub-committee of the university Equality Committee