TWO charities from Mabe and Penryn are celebrating Christmas early this week after being awarded over £8,000 between them by the Packet's parent company Newsquest.

Mabe Youth and Community Project (MYCP) has been awarded £7,000 to replace the failing boiler system in the community hall while St Gluvias Community Hall in St Thomas Street, Penryn has been given £1,340 to install lighting along its brand new step free path from the car park.

Keith Bryant chairman of the MYCP said: "We are over the moon. This going to revolutionise energy and expenditure here. Our current boiler is over 20 years old and runs at 40% capacity. The new boiler will run at 90% capacity.

"It is going to make a tremendous difference to our energy bills. It's the best Christmas present."

Annie Jones from St Gluvias Community Hall said: "That's absolutely wonderful, absolutely brilliant. We have have got this really lovely disabled path up to hall but it really needs lights to light the way."

The MYCP provides social and recreational facilities for those who live in Mabe parish. The community hall hosts member groups regular activities including chapel meetings. Age UK weekly lunch club, Brownies, Mabe short mat and carpet bowls clubs and garden club as well as being chosen venue for a support group for sufferers of COPD and various slimming clubs.

Additionally it is a focal point for social and fundraising events such as the annual pantomime, coffee mornings and meetings.

The hall has just passed its 20th anniversary of opening with the boiler on its last legs and only kept going through human intervention.

The St Gluvias Community Hall in Penryn is used by a wide range of different community groups including the Brownies, a home education group, a cheerleading club, yoga, crafts, tango and ballroom dancing lessons with a typical annual footfall of 25,000 people a year.

Grants totalling nearly £300,000 were made up and down the country after the annual round of donations made on behalf of Newsquest Media Group, one of the UK's leading regional news publishers.

Over the last ten years alone, Newsquest has given more than £3 million to help charitable community causes all over the country, from Scotland and Northern Ireland to London and the West Country.

The trustees who make the grants agonised for days to make difficult choices from a stack of deserving applications, but narrowed the list down to those which they thought would deliver the most worthwhile practical benefits to communities served by Newsquest’s local news brands.

Chairman of the trustees, Simon Westrop, said: “ It was good to see Wales and Scotland back on track after a couple of lean years. And We were glad to be able to give to some exciting projects making people’s lives better in all sorts of ways – like the Oxford Playhouse plan to wrap up theatre and take it out to isolated and disadvantaged communities in Oxfordshire in a tent donated by Newsquest. Year on year, we are seeing better applications with more focused attention on different ways of helping - caring for the present but also building for the future.

“If your application did not succeed this time, please don’t be discouraged, but look at the applications that have won grants and think how you can come up with even better ideas next year.”

The two biggest awards of £15,000 each went to two charities founded in the 19th century by a group of benefactors including novelist Charles Dickens. They are now known as the Journalists’ Charity and Newstraid, both helping people who have worked in the newspaper industry but have fallen on hard times. And another grant went to the Rory Peck Trust which looks after the interests and welfare of freelance journalists.

The Gannett Foundation UK, which makes the grants, retains a modest reserve to cater for urgent applications until the next round of awards in November 2018. Applications can be made through any local Newsquest Media Group editor.