Education
Bridge to Sixth
One-to-one mentoring, books and bus fares for care-experienced young people through GCSEs and A-Levels in seven local authorities.
Learn moreFor more than sixty years, The Avon Trust has walked beside people on the margins of British life — older neighbours living alone, children leaving care, families navigating hardship, and the wild rivers and meadows that bind our communities together. We do not arrive with answers. We arrive with listening, time, and the resources to help local people lead the change they have always wanted.
Joined this month by 214 new monthly supporters
across Bristol, Bath, Bradford-on-Avon & beyond.
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People supported · 2018–25
£0
Granted to grassroots groups
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Active volunteers nationwide
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Of every £1 reaches frontline work
We were founded in 1962 by a small group of teachers, midwives and farmers along the River Avon who believed that charity should never feel like charity — only neighbourliness, organised. That conviction still shapes everything we do. Whether we are funding a community kitchen in Keynsham or restoring a chalk stream outside Salisbury, we begin in the same place: at a kitchen table, with the people who live with the problem.
Read our full missionEvery programme begins with a year of conversations — with the people who will receive help, and the people already doing the work locally.
Eight in ten of our trustees live in the communities we serve. Our reach is national; our roots remain firmly in the South West.
Our grants are long, flexible and unrestricted by default. We trust the people closest to the problem to make the right calls.
We share our impact openly — including the years when our work did not land as we hoped. Trust grows in the light.
Education
One-to-one mentoring, books and bus fares for care-experienced young people through GCSEs and A-Levels in seven local authorities.
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Elder support
Weekly home visits, hot meals and friendship for older neighbours living alone — now in 42 villages and small towns across Somerset and Wiltshire.
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Environment
Restoration of chalk streams, hedgerows and ancient meadows along the Bristol and Hampshire Avon — led by farmers, anglers and schoolchildren.
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Welfare
Community kitchens, warm spaces and casework support in 19 towns hit hardest by the cost-of-living squeeze.
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Children
A floating library and literacy programme reaching 32 primary schools along the Kennet & Avon Canal — because the books should come to the children.
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Empowerment
Micro-grants of £500–£5,000 awarded by panels of local residents — backing the ideas grown around kitchen tables, not in boardrooms.
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This winter the Avon Trust will keep 38 community kitchens open, deliver 24,000 hot meals and reach 6,200 older neighbours through Sunday Doors. Will you help us hold the line until spring?
Gift Aid adds 25% to your donation at no cost to you, if you are a UK taxpayer.
From a Sunday morning visit to a once-a-quarter river clean, our 2,960 volunteers shape every programme we run. We will match the gift of your hours to a role that fits your life — quietly, properly, and with proper training.
Find a role2 hours / week
A weekly visit, a phone call, a walk to the post office — the quiet difference of consistent company.
Term-time
An hour each week in a primary school, listening to a child who needs an unhurried adult ear.
Seasonal
Weekend mornings restoring stretches of the Bristol Avon: planting, monitoring water, training the next generation.
Skilled — remote
Lend legal, design or finance expertise to small charities we fund — usually 4–8 hours a quarter.
Impact, in our experience, is rarely sudden. It looks like a kettle boiling, a uniform pressed, a young person sitting an exam they were never expected to sit. These are a few of the moments we have been privileged to witness.
All stories
Education · Bath
Naomi entered our Bridge to Sixth programme at thirteen, on the edge of being moved out of mainstream school. She begins her degree in midwifery at Cardiff this autumn.
Elder support · Trowbridge
After losing his wife of fifty-one years, Geoffrey was paired with a Sunday Doors befriender. Two years on, he runs a Tuesday allotment club for nine of his neighbours.
We measure reach in the only honest unit we know: people who told us our work changed something. The shape of this chart is the shape of community trust earned slowly, in person.
Sat 13 June · 09:30
10K and family fun run along the towpath from Bradford-on-Avon to Bathampton. All proceeds to River Keepers.
Bradford-on-Avon · Wiltshire
Thu 9 July · 18:30
An open conversation with young people from our Bridge to Sixth programme. Refreshments and a string quartet.
The Holburne Museum · Bath
Sat 27 Sept · All day
A field-to-table day with the farmers who steward the meadows we restore — apple pressing, hayrides and supper under canvas.
Westbury · Wiltshire
Field note
12 February 2026
Notes from three years of evaluation: why an hour of company changes more than a year of leaflets.
Environment
28 January 2026
Eight years of partnership with the Wessex Rivers Trust, summarised in one quiet morning's catch survey.
Children
11 January 2026
A profile of Ms Iqbal's class in Devizes, who finished four chapter books between September and December.
"They came back. That was the thing. Every Tuesday for two years, in the rain, in the heat, after my husband died — they came back. I don't know any other charity that does that."
Margaret, 81 · Frome
"The grant was small, but it was the way they gave it — three years, no strings, and a trustee who came to listen. We could finally plan instead of survive."
Daniel Akinwale · Director, Bristol Refugee Welcome
"They were the first people who treated my son as someone with a future, not a file. He has just been accepted to read Geography at York."
Helena Whitcombe · Parent, Bath
"For our farm, they were not just funders. They walked the river with us, in waders, in February. I have rarely felt so understood as a custodian."
Tom Hartley · Tenant farmer, Westbury
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