- Area:
- East Midlands
- Programme:
- Supporting Change and Impact
- Release date:
- 20 3 2012
Charities across the East Midlands who are struggling with the effects of public funding cuts and increased demand for their services have been given a Lottery lifeline today.
Big Lottery Fund (BIG) has awarded 10 of its grant-holders in the East Midlands an extra year’s worth of funding to enable them to continue their work through the tough economic environment. Grants of up to £10,000 have also been awarded to a further 43 projects to help them review their work and find ways of becoming more sustainable.
Projects sharing in the funding - totalling over £1.2 million - provide vital services to some of the most vulnerable groups in society. Many face an uncertain future as their Lottery funding comes to an end, compounded by increasing demand from beneficiaries as other services are forced to scale back or close down, and welfare reforms begin to take effect.
Groundwork Leicester and Leicestershire Ltd has received £108,150 to help secure its future. One of the organisation’s projects recycles, refurbishes and reuses old bicycles, trains young offenders in bike maintenance and donates fixed up bicycles to people in deprived areas. A separate project encourages children to monitor their school’s environmental performance. These two projects were combined in a pilot called Air Today, Bike Tomorrow and with the BIG funding they plan to expand the pilot across Leicester, working with an extra 65 primary schools and carry out a consultation to improve how they operate.
Executive Director Alan Diggles, said: “It was really important to get this funding. It will have a huge impact, giving young people more skills. It’s not only about improving health and encouraging exercise, but also boosts confidence and self-esteem and helps reduce the cars taking children to schooland the associated environmental impact. It will help ussupport older people and those from minority ethnic communitiesacross the county, to deliverbetter well-beinginmore deprived communities.
Nottinghamshire Women’s Aid Ltd received £106,905 to help expand its service. It’s Farr Centre in Worksop supports women to develop their self-esteem, including those who have experienced physical, emotional, sexual or economic abuse. They provide courses aimed at increasing self-confidence including ICT, belly-dancing, languages, yoga, crafts, and anxiety management. This new funding will help them expand their support further out into Nottinghamshire.
Centre Coordinator Emma Hannah said: “Previous funding from the Big Lottery Fund has enabled us to provide a variety of personal development courses with over 600 women resulting in them accessing further learning and courses, volunteer work and gaining or changing employment.
“This new funding will provide us with the facilities to carry out consultation with a variety of agencies and service users in order to further develop the service to meet the needs of the wider community, including hard-to-reach communities and enable us to pilot the proposed development plan for an additional year.”
The funding is part of a Big Lottery Fund initiative called Supporting Change & Impact, which totals over £70m and is designed to help Lottery-funded good causes cope with the developing impact of public funding cuts. The National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) estimates that voluntary and community groups will experience a reduction in public funding of up to £3.3 billion by 2015.
Mick McGrath, Big Lottery Fund Head of East Midlands Region, said: “As a major funder of the charitable and community sector, BIG is acutely aware of the rising pressures facing groups as public funding cuts begin to make an impact. This funding will provide a lifeline to organisations as they strive to continue providing vital services to disadvantaged and vulnerable people across the region.
As part of the £70m support package, BIG also added over £25m to its two main open grants programme in England, Reaching Communities and Awards for All, to fund an additional 1200 charitable and community projects, and has awarded almost £20 million to partner organisations that distribute or manage funding on its behalf to further support their grant holders. These include MIND, Groundwork, and Age UK, who deliver funding as part of BIG’s Well-being and Changing Spaces grants programmes.
A full list of projects awarded an extra year’s funding
A list of projects receiving up to £10,000 to review and plan for the future.
Further Information
Big Lottery Fund Press Office: 020 7211 1888
Out of hours media contact: 07867 500 572
Full details of the Big Lottery Fund programmes and grant awards are available on the website: www.biglotteryfund.org.uk
Ask BIG a question here: https://ask.biglotteryfund.org.uk
Follow BIG on Twitter: www.twitter.com/BigLotteryFund #BIGlf
Find BIG on facebook: www.facebook.com/BigLotteryFund
Notes to Editors
- The Big Lottery Fund (BIG), the largest distributor of National Lottery good cause funding, is responsible for giving out 46% of the money raised for good causes by the National Lottery.
- BIG is committed to bringing real improvements to communities and the lives of people most in need and has been rolling out grants to health, education, environment and charitable causes across the UK. Since June 2004 BIG has awarded over £4.4bn.
- The Fund was formally established by Parliament on 1 December 2006.
- Since the National Lottery began in 1994, 28p from every pound spent by the public has gone to good causes. As a result, over £27 billion has now been raised and more than 370,000 grants awarded across arts, sport, heritage, charities, health, education and the environment.
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