The No Toy Left Behind campaign in Axminster has been awarded £2,000 from East Devon District Council.

The No Toy Left Behind scheme will see pre-loved toys repaired and refurbished to a high standard to help cut down on landfill waste.

It is hoped the project will encourage residents to give more thought to their buying habits and challenge the cultural norms of consumerism by offering clean, good quality, secondhand toys that will be giftable quality.

The aim is to eventually open a town centre secondhand toy shop in Axminster, with plans to run upcycling workshops and work in parallel with the newly-launched Axminster Repair Cafe.

They also hope to offer free toys to families in financial difficulties through the local food bank.

The £2,000 grant was part of a £50,000 pot of Crowdfund East Devon grants.

Organiser Beth Steele said: "We've been completely blown away by the support we've received for the project and we're so excited to be able to launch No Toy Left Behind in Axminster!"

In the last few weeks, East Devon has also granted £6,000 towards a project to help a group of parents from Luppitt put a centrally located playground into the village, and £3,000 towards a scheme that ended up raising £13,060 from Transition Exmouth, called Execargo, to buy electric cargo bikes.

Free crowdfunding workshops are still being held to help the district's community and voluntary groups and other not-for-profit organisations access more than £50,000 of remaining funding available from the council through Crowdfunder.

This money available is in addition to a large amount of county-wide crowdfunding money available from Devon County Council and Devon and Cornwall Police, as part of the Crowdfund Devon partnership.

Councillor Jack Rowland, EDDC's portfolio holder for finance said: "I'd encourage anyone thinking of starting up a community based crowdfunding project to take advantage of the free training support from EDDC.

"The examples shown of successful crowdfunding projects really demonstrate what can be achieved with the additional support available from East Devon District Council for eligible schemes where targets are achieved."

Find out more, particularly about the free online 'Introduction to Crowdfunding' sessions being offered by EDDC, here.