Sir James Reckitt Charity

The Sir James Reckitt Charity, founded by Quaker industrialist Sir James Reckitt, advances social, material, and moral welfare for Hull and East Yorkshire communities while upholding peace, Quaker principles, and fairness. Core values emphasize community empowerment, moral improvement, and non-violence, driving funding toward resilient, adaptive charities through unrestricted support for core costs, capacity building, and relational partnerships. They believe lasting impact arises from trusting local organizations to deploy resources flexibly, fostering self-determination, integration, and holistic wellbeing rooted in Quaker service and peace education.

Thematic priorities span Quaker faith initiatives, peace education promoting conflict resolution and non-violence, social and community development strengthening cohesion and integration for ethnic minorities and isolated individuals, health and wellbeing enhancements including mental health counselling, medical provisions, and therapeutic activities, and education advancement via youth work, schools, nurseries, after-school clubs, mentoring, and skills training. They fund interventions for disadvantaged youth through personal development programs like cadet schemes, offender rehabilitation emphasizing moral improvement, peer support groups, employment training, and community-led outreach; family support addressing carer needs; and holistic services tackling social isolation, poverty relief, food insecurity, and BME wellbeing via advocacy, befriending, creative arts, and sports. Supported models include day services, drop-in centres, equipment provision, building improvements, trauma-informed rehabilitation, preventative youth programs, and grassroots micro-grants enabling early intervention and resilience-building for children, young people aged 5-19, families in crisis, offenders, and ethnic minority communities.

Exclusions encompass all warlike or military activities, prioritizing non-violent, peace-aligned work. Distinctives include century-old Quaker family stewardship, deep Hull and East Yorkshire rootedness serving place-based disadvantaged groups like youth at risk, offenders seeking rehabilitation, ethnic minorities facing exclusion, and isolated elderly, alongside national Quaker causes benefiting locals. They favor grassroots innovation, community-led approaches, unrestricted flexibility for core resilience, and organizations embodying lived experience, moral welfare, and inclusive integration over top-down or duplicative efforts.