Big Lottery Fund

Hello 2012!

As we welcome in 2012, we start to think about lists, resolutions and new beginnings. To do this we asked groups that we support to send us in their hopes, aspirations and predictions for the upcoming year.

Listen to Big Lottery Fund CEO Peter Wanless telling us his ambitions for 2012.

Listen to the other submissions here:

Awards for All brings new year cheer

In total this month, 23 groups are sharing in £205,065 from BIG’s Awards for all programme.

Recipients include Nottinghamshire Unemployed Workers Centres Association (NUWC) which has received £9,545 to provide a series of workshops and online seminars for the community to help people develop their personal financial skills. The organisation will offer sessions to groups such as students who need financial advice on managing student loans and credit cards as they transition from school to university or older people who want to more effectively manage their household budgets. It will also help those who repeat the cycle of unmanageable debt because they don’t have the basic financial skills to recognise that they are going down the same path again.

Julian Stocks, Chief Executive of NUWC, said: “We have certainly experienced an increase in the numbers of people seeking debt advice, and in fact in Mansfield, the demand is pretty much outstripping capacity. Much of the work we do here is resolving people’s debt problems whereas this particular work will be preventative. It is an extremely important area that is not well funded so we are delighted to get this grant.”

The workshops are open to anyone in the community and if there is a group who would like NUWC to run a workshop for them they can contact Annetta Smith on 01623 481882.

Elsewhere in the region, a grant of £9,926 will help women who want to return to work. Daventry Volunteer Centre receives the money to run group and one to one training sessions for women, help them to identify their strengths and skills, and develop individual action plans to help with future employment opportunities.

Meanwhile, Caistor Outdoor Pursuits Education Limited in Market Rasen receives £9,840 to help young people resolve their issues and have a more positive future. The group will run training in life coaching skills, mental health, anger management and management committee skills to staff and volunteers. Coaching will also be given for secondary school pupils who are not in mainstream education.

Other projects receiving funds today include: Supporters of Croft School (SOCS) in Sutton-in-Ashfield which will use £9,979 to run an after school and summer activity club for pupils and parents; Lincolnshire Emergency Medical Response which gets £10,000 to purchase and adapt a replacement for an old emergency response vehicle; and Age Concern (Chesterfield and District) which receives £9,378 to develop a social enterprise run by volunteers who have experienced physical difficulties, to offer access audits to community groups and businesses.

Awards for All offers grants of between £300 and £10,000 to social and environmental projects that will benefit local communities and make a difference to the lives of those most in need. Voluntary and community groups, schools, health organisations and parish and town councils can all apply.

Visit www.awardsforall.org.uk or phone 0845 4 10 20 30 for more information

See a full list of this month's awards (Excel spreadsheed).

Newark Chauntry Group - project video

The group were awarded £4,300 from Awards for All to run lifestyle classes for older people in Newark.

We visited the project to find out more.

Reaching Communities

This year saw us make 45 grants totalling £11,574,870. We visited a couple of these this year – Nottinghamshire Women’s Aid and RCAN’s Grow and Grow project.

Nottinghamshire Women’s Aid received £113,892 in January for their Hands are not for Hurting project. The project concentrates on the effects that domestic abuse can have on children and offers an intense course of treatment to help.

One worker at the project said: “We cover all the issues from the start. We look at the children’s knowledge of abuse. In one session we draw round a body shape and encourage them to point out where you get different feelings. One little girl drew two black eyes because she’d seen her mum with them. Others drew tears running down the face for sadness, speech bubbles describing shouting and anger. This helps link the children’s knowledge of abuse to their own experiences.

We do things like make a paper chain of people – support networks – all the people they know who can help or who they can turn to. We string these up each week so they don’t feel alone.”

“The Hands are not for Hurting project has really helped us,” said one woman.” The children can see that other children have been through the same thing. They can say how they feel and not be wrong. No-one judges them. My eldest had very low self esteem but she’s starting to believe in herself and get her zest for life back.”

RCAN’s project uses a variety of methods to engage communities and encourage them to grow their own food – this includes running taster sessions to try growing food at home, and indoors on windowsills. The project has also been working in partnership with existing small groups to provide them with support and advice on local food growing.

At St Barnabas Church in Chilwell, the project has created a fruit and vegetable garden for a local playgroup which uses all the produce to make snacks for the children.

“We grew a huge range of food,” says Alan Withington, project coordinator. “Pumpkins, blueberries, salads, runner beans, sugar snap peas, tomatoes, spuds, courgettes, strawberries and herbs. They used everything they grew for snacks or made the fruit into smoothies for the children to drink. It’s been a real success in a short amount of time and we’re looking to expand the project to include blackcurrants and raspberries in the beds and thornless blackberries up the fence.”

The project uses a behavioural approach to tackling food poverty.

“We’ve got research to suggest that many people know what they’re supposed to buy and eat in order to have a healthy diet,” says Alan. “But despite that, they don’t necessarily do that. If you grow it, however, you will eat it. So we’re tackling behaviour, not knowledge.”

If you’ve got a story to tell about your project please contact us as we’d love to hear from you.

Village SOS National Conference

Monday 27 February - Birmingham

This landmark conference features a fantastic line up of rural and community enterprise experts including:

• Peter Ainsworth, Chair of The Big Lottery Fund
• Peter Couchman, Chief Executive of the Plunkett Foundation
• Sylvia Brown, Chief Executive of Action for Communities in Rural England
• Steve Wyler, Chief Executive, Locality

This is a FREE event that will feature the best examples of rural community enterprises across the UK including those featured in the Village SOS television series. It will give you the chance to meet like-minded communities and hear from the experts on topics such as:

• Taking on assets of community value (for example village shops and pubs, community centres, and youth facilities)
• Business planning
• Accessing finance
• Legal/governance skills
• And much more

This high profile event will provide inspiration and information never before delivered at a national conference to rural communities from across the UK wanting to rejuvenate their villages.

To read more and book your place visit the VSOS website.

Other news from BIG in the East Midlands

Forces in Mind Trust Launches

The Lottery-funded Forces in Mind Trust (FIMT) has launched, with the backing of The Foundation of Prince William and Prince Harry.

Over the next 20 years, the Forces in Mind Trust will provide UK-wide long term support for Service personnel and Veterans to make a successful transition to civilian life. The focus will be on addressing a range of problems that some ex-service personnel and their families can experience back in civilian life, such as poor mental health, family breakdown and alcohol-related problems.

The Foundation of Prince William and Prince Harry was set up by the Princes in 2009, and they share the priority of the Forces in Mind Trust to support personnel and their families through the challenges of returning to civilian life. The Foundation will back the Trust with its own grants over a three-year programme.

Peter Ainsworth, UK Chair of Big lottery Fund, said: “By investing this £35 million, the Big Lottery Fund is supporting a ground-breaking programme of expertly designed interventions and activities, offering essential assistance, which will not only improve the lives of people directly, but will inform national policy and practice more widely.”

The Chairman of the Forces in Mind Trust, Air Vice-Marshal Tony Stables said: “As a first step, the Forces in Mind Trust will undertake a comprehensive review of the transition process from military service to civilian life for all service men and women, and their families.”

A pilot project at Catterick in Yorkshire will provide 12 months of enhanced support and guidance on employment, accommodation, educational needs, and mental health issues for approximately 1000 early service leavers from across the UK.

The Trust’s work will also include commissioning research to improve knowledge of the issues affecting veterans and their families, which will help shape new services and inform national policy. The Trust will also undertake awareness raising campaigns, and provide peer advice and support, particularly to those veterans who are most vulnerable.

The Trust continues BIG’s long-standing legacy of support for veterans across the UK. Since 2004, the Fund has given more than £88 million to programmes supporting veterans. The Fund’s Heroes Return initiative has enabled over 51 000 Second World War Veterans, widows, spouses and carers to journey back to the places where they served and fought or where their loved ones died.

Read the full press release and details of organisations involved

Building capabilities for impact and legacy

Helping VCS organisations and social enterprises to become more effective will continue to be a priority for BIG over the next few years.

To develop our thinking, we have published a discussion paper. This paper is for voluntary sector and social enterprise managers working in both frontline and infrastructure support and development organisations. It sets out our approach to ‘building capabilities within voluntary organisations’, and gives an opportunity for voluntary and other organisations to influence this approach.

This is your chance to have your say. This paper can be viewed on our website, along with an online survey. The survey will run until 15 March 2012, and will help us to decide how best to allocate at least £20 million over the next three years in this area of work.

Young Peoples Fund evaluation findings

The Young People’s Fund (YPF) is a collection of programmes that ran across the UK from 2004. Arrangements and approaches for the programmes varied, but all highlighted the importance of actively involving young people in planning and running projects that set out to – among other aims – improve young people’s confidence, well-being and engagement in the economy and wider society. Across the UK, about 700,000 young people took part in YPF projects.

GEN Consulting and Wavehill Consulting carried out a five-year evaluation of YPF from 2006. As well as considering the overall success of projects and programmes in achieving what they set out to, the evaluation had a strong focus on considering approaches to effective involvement by young people – so the publications available here include good practice guides on that and related subjects, as well as annual reports.

The main findings from the evaluation include the following:

• Taking part in YPF projects helped young people to develop their skills for future employment and to change their outlook and so make more positive choices, in particular regarding attitudes towards school.
• BIG's requirement for projects to actively involve young people in how they were planned and run has led to a change in culture among youth organisations. It has allowed young people to shape services that affect them, and in doing so it has further developed valuable skills among participants.
• YPF has helped young people to make a positive contribution to their local community. It has helped to reduce the likelihood of anti-social behaviour and has promoted active citizenship.

Read the final report, which is accompanied by a set of case studies.

We need case studies - get in touch!

Like the Awards for all video and podcasts earlier in this update, we are on the lookout for other projects and groups that we have funded, to be featured. So if you would like us to visit you and write/record/video a case study - please let us know!

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If you would like to contact the East Midlands team please email enquiries.em@biglotteryfund.org.uk or call 0115 8722950. You can find us on Facebook and Twitter too!