- Area:
- West Midlands
- Programme:
- Awards for All England
- Release date:
- 20 2 2012
A baking workshop to inspire budding young chefs is one West Midlands project receiving a Big Lottery Fund grant today.
Sixty nine projects across the region are sharing over £558,000 from BIG’s Awards for All programme, with many of the groups using their awards to encourage learning and the acquisition of skills.
The Worth Foundation Ltd will use their grant of £8,726 to run baking workshops in Birmingham and establish Devenishgirl Bakery as a social enterprise for unemployed young people, equipping them with various practical skills.
Project Manager Melanie Glass, who will also be running vintage tea parties and a cake hamper scheme as part of the sweet-toothed initiative, said: “I will be taking on young people and teaching them personal, development and enterprise skills, baking and decorating skills and front of house skills. Hopefully six months with us will lead to employment or they may wish to go to college to study baking. At the moment it’s me that does all the baking but I will be passing on these skills to the young people and potentially in the future will look to them to do more of the baking.”
With their £10,000 grant, Istrat! in Erdington, Birmingham will host business fairs to offer advice and support to new and struggling businesses, on issues including debt, counselling, coaching, motivation and life planning. People's Advocacy Network in Herefordshire will spend their grant of £6,982 on running beauty courses in hair styling, make-up and skin care, offering advice on fashion styles, shoes and colours for women with learning difficulties, as well as the opportunity to participate in a catwalk show.
Other projects receiving funding today include: Kundalini Yoga Group in Dorridge, Solihull, which will use its £10,000 grant to develop a camera club and subsequent photography exhibition for disadvantaged black and ethnic minorities;
Dorridge Surgery Patients Participation Group, which received £1,020 and aims to address increasingly low levels of health in the local community through walking; and I-Sore Media, which will provide media production training and qualifications to ex-offenders and recovering drug addicts in Solihull with their grant of £9,618. This will provide them will new skills and qualifications to improve their employment prospects.
John Taylor, Big Lottery Fund’s Head of the West Midlands region, said: “Young people can be the hardest hit in times of recession. The Big Lottery Fund mission is about supporting those most in need, and sometimes the best support we can offer is to provide the opportunities to learn employable skills and develop confidence.”
BIG’s Awards for All programme 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 410 20 30 for more information.
See a full list of 
grants awarded in the West Midlands
- 403KB today
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 330,000 grants awarded across arts, sport, heritage, charities, health, education and the environment.
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