North West region update
Winter edition
Communities Living Sustainably
Could you help us learn how communities in England can live in a more sustainable way?
If the answer is yes, your community could be one of 10 to receive up to £1 million to work across the public, private, voluntary and community sectors to build a sustainable and resilient community that can develop inspirational ideas and share their learning with other communities across England.
We are particularly keen to see vulnerable people benefitting by making greener choices that will help them reduce their costs and improve their quality of life.
Our offer
We will invest in up to 10 communities by providing:
- Access to expert support and advice to help each community develop their skills, knowledge and abilities and build on best practice within and between communities
- Up to £10,000 to develop a project delivery plan that details the environmental, economic and social challenges affecting the community and how they can be addressed
- Grants of between £500,000 and £1 million for up to 5 years. This funding will provide an opportunity for communities to work together to access further resources and support so that their communities are sustainable and resilient long after our funding ends.
Want to know more . . .
Please visit our website or contact the Big Advice Line on 0845 4 10 20 30. Please note the closing date for the expression of interest stage is Tuesday 31 January 2012.
Reaching Communities Buildings
We have reviewed the buildings strand of our Reaching Communities programme and have made some small immediate changes to the eligibility criteria.
With immediate effect we have:
1. Introduced IMD 2010 data on top of IMD 2007 data
2. Increased the urban percentage from 15% to 20%
The eligibility checker has been updated to incorporate IMD 2010 data and now includes the following eligible areas:
- The most deprived 20 per cent of LSOAs categorised as urban
- The most deprived 20 per cent of LSOAs categorised as rural (town and fringe)
- The most deprived 50 per cent of LSOAs categorised as rural (villages/hamlets/isolated dwellings)
We have also introduced a process which offers some more flexibility around the eligibility criteria. This means we may now make an exception for projects that are based near an eligible area and which primarily serve beneficiaries in that area.
More information and FAQs about these changes can be found on our website
Awards in the region
We have been busy in the region over the past financial year giving out more than 900 awards totaling over £24 million in the North West from April 2010 to October 2011.
Some of the fabulous projects we have funded recently include Vauxhall Childrens Centre VIP Programme, who would have had to close because of reductions in budgets if it hadn’t been for the £279,337 grant from BIG to keep it going.
The Liverpool project is just one of seven in the North West region sharing in grants totalling over £1.8million from BIG’s Reaching Communities programme today. Projects in Macclesfield, St Helens, Blackburn, Halton and the Wyre will also benefit from the money, which aims to build stronger communities and help those most in need.
Read about more awards in the region at the Newsroom area of our website.
Know someone who isn't online?
Did you know there are 8.4 million people in the UK who don’t know how to use the internet?
Give just an hour of your time this Christmas to show someone who’s never been online what a doddle, what a giggle and how useful the wonderful web can be.
Whether you've just decided to help or been supporting someone to use the net for a while, find out how and join the UK’s growing network of digital champions today.
BIG champions better play for kids in England
Children across England want more diverse play opportunities according to a survey commissioned by BIG
The results show that while computer games are predictably high on children’s fun agenda, with close to 90% regularly playing, more than one third of respondents said that they would like to try other activities with den and tree house building, martial arts and making things with wood or other materials coming top of their wish list.
An opinion poll, conducted to coincide with the launch of the evaluation report of our Children’s Play programme, asked children of between 7 and 15 years old about the types of play that they currently do and would like to do more of.
The poll results support the findings of the three year independent evaluation of our Children’s Play programme. The programme committed £123million since 2006 to widen children’s access to good quality play across England. During the lifetime of the programme 351 grants went to local authorities in England for play portfolios covering 1,466 individual play projects.
For more information see our website
Building Capabilities discussion process
BIG is launching a nationwide discussion asking voluntary sector and social enterprise managers working in both frontline and infrastructure support and development organisations to tell us how they think we should best use our funding to develop support to VCS organisations and social enterprises.
We have invested more than £200 million on capacity building for VCS organisations and social enterprises over the last 10 years; our nationwide discussion is intended to stimulate debate and thinking to shape, influence and inform our future thinking and investment.
To begin to gather ideas and responses, we have posted an online survey. We will also be organising discussion events in 2012. A paper setting out the principles behind our future investment plans and an on-line survey is available available on our website . The deadline for responding to this discussion paper is 15 March 2012. We will then publish a revised paper which responds to and incorporates your comments. We look forward to having this discussion with you in the new year.
Don’t forget to watch out for.......
The Big Lunch on 3 June 2012 – a one day get together for neighbours – a great excuse to get to know the people in your community. www.thebiglunch.com
Jubilee People’s Millions – As we celebrate the Queen’s Jubilee in June 2012, we will be finding out how our Jubilee Millions projects are getting on and how they will be commemorating the Queen’s 60th year on the throne.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New year from the North West Team!
BIG advice line 0845 4 10 20 30
