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Family Learning

For areas: England
Open for applications: 19 September 2006
Application closing date: 29 August 2008
Minimum grant: £10,000
Maximum grant: £500,000
Total available: Up to £40 million over three years

Big Lottery Fund has launched Family Learning, a programme that helps parents to understand more about how their children learn and encourages adults and children to learn as a family.

By “family” we mean at least one parent or adult carer and at least one child under the age of 16. We will only fund projects that involve adults and children learning together and deliver all three of the following changes:

family members participate in and enjoy educational activity more
family members have more skills and knowledge (these may include confidence and effective communication);
parents and carers are better able to interact positively with their children and support them in learning.

We want to support families who face barriers to learning or who are not confident helping their children to learn. We are particularly interested in hearing from projects where learning is not based on getting a qualification and those that will help families who have not been involved in learning together before. We are looking for imaginative projects that meet local needs and remove the practical barriers to learning, for example, by providing travel costs, additional support for disabled participants, or childcare.

You can apply for grants of over £10,000 and up to £500,000, though we would expect the average grant to be between £100,000 - £150,000. We will fund projects for up to five years. You can apply on a local or national basis.

You can apply to Family Learning if you are:

a registered charity
a voluntary or community group
a statutory body, including schools and children’s centres
a charitable or not-for-profit company
a social enterprise
a private sector organisation.

Statutory bodies and private sector organisations applying must involve a voluntary or community sector partner in planning and running the project.

If you have any questions about this programme, or you want an application pack and guidance notes, please call the Big Lottery Fund Advice Line on 0845 4 10 20 30.

You can also download the pack and guidance notes by clicking on the link on the right. The PDF version of the Outline Proposal Form is for printing out and filling in by hand. The RTF version of the form can be completed on a computer.

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