Our June 2025 Community Fund winners - Swindon Advocacy Movement

We are working with local charity Swindon Advocacy Movement (SAM), to help provide bus travel training for local adults with learning disabilities.

SAM applied for our June 2025 Community Fund and have been provided Dayrider passes so they can prepare vulnerable members of the community to travel around the town and surrounding areas - helping them gain independence.

As part of its Project Boost initiative, Swindon Advocacy Movement does an excellent job, supporting local people - ensuring they feel they can travel around their community and feel confident to do so.

This will be particularly vital for helping people navigate the new layout when the Fleming Way Boulevard opens this autumn.

Through our community fund, we are pleased to be able to support Swindon Advocacy Movement in its very worthwhile activities by providing free travel for trainers and SAM members.

Caroline Rodie, community projects manager for Swindon Advocacy Movement. added: “It’s great to see the people we work with gain independence and feel more confident when catching the bus, which is key to enable individuals to be able to travel safely.

“Travel training enables people to access their community and feel part of it. It opens up a wider variety of activities for people, and gives them the opportunity to make new connections and build relationships.

“People with a learning disability can feel isolated and tend to stay at home more. At Project Boost, we enable people to access places in the community, support with personal goals, help to build confidence and independence - which suppress people to lead a more active and fulfilling life.

“Our team supports individuals to identify which buses to take on their journey, safe places to wait, how to board buses safely, use their bus passes, how to depart the bus and recognise destination landmarks. This is going to be extremely important when the new bus hub opens at Fleming Avenue. The help we are receiving from Swindon’s Bus Company’s community fund is absolutely invaluable.”

For more information about Swindon Advocacy Movement, please visit swindonadvocacy.com.

You can apply for our December 2025 Community Fund over on our application page.