Petworth youth centre gets £5,000 donation

The Sylvia Beaufoy Youth Centre, in Petworth, suffered cuts of around £20,000 a year recently, as part of the county council’s money-saving measures.

In looking to offset some of this deficit, Midhurst businessman Roger Morgan-Grenville hopes a hefty donation will set the ball rolling on further help for the centre.

Mr Morgan-Grenville, managing director of Dexam International Ltd, in Holmbush Way, said the company had a charitable trust fund, and this was just the sort of cause it was looking to support.

“Members of the club came to present to us,” he said. “We have put £5,000 in with the hope of putting more in the future. The guys at Petworth are wonderful.”

He added the company was also committed to making more donations during the next few years.

Nevertheless, he estimated what his company had given was less than half of what the youth centre needed, and said he hoped this donation could encourage other potential benefactors to come forward.

“I hope it can survive and thrive,” he said of the youth centre. “There are some pretty vulnerable people there who are really helped and would be really not helped if it closed.”

Of the money collected in the company’s trust fund, he said: “The company had a point of view: rather than plonking it with a big national charity, use it to do something local.”

He said he hoped the donation would encourage people to ‘wake up to the effects of the cuts’ and take action.

The club marked its 50th anniversary last May and throughout the years it has provided a service to the young people of Petworth.

The youth centre is run by the Sylvia Beaufoy Trust.

At the time of its anniversary, it was reported it was ‘not the happiest of years for the club to be celebrating such an anniversary’, following the funding cuts by West Sussex County Council.