New Writing North and Morpugo's Farms for City Children awarded News Corp funding

New Writing North and Michael Morpurgo’s Farms for City Children are among seven charities sharing £100,000 donated by HarperCollins UK parent company News Corp UK, via the annual News Corp Giving programme.

New Writing North and Michael Morpurgo’s Farms for City Children will each receive £10,000 to help progress their cause.

Charities providing opportunities for young people to build skills and confidence, with a focus on delivering results in the area of literacy, employability and social mobility were nominated by staff from across News Corp UK companies, including HarperCollins. A panel of representatives from across the group chose the final 10 recipients, and each charity has been allocated two News Corp UK representatives to help deliver their mission and give them access to resources and expertise along the way.

New Writing North works to empower people from across society to become writers and supports high quality work from the North of England. Farms for City Children was set up by HarperCollins author Morpurgo and his wife Clare, and enables children from diverse backgrounds to live and work together for a week on a farm in the countryside.

The other successful charities in the programme included Glasgow-based children’s charity Jeely Piece Club, which provides play and learning opportunities for young children.

Fiona Allen, HarperCollins communications director, said: “We’re delighted to be supporting these fantastic charities, all of which offer young people from differing backgrounds opportunities to learn, grow and succeed. We look forward to working closely in particularly with New Writing North and Farms for City Children, as well as Jeely Piece Club, which is close to our Glasgow offices and Distribution Centre, where volunteers have been supporting young families through the Literacy Project over the last year.”