Seven million ‘Stepping Stones’ in the right direction for Wales

Area:

Wales

Programme:

Stepping Stones

Release date:

17 1 2008

The £6,964,487 cash roll out will support projects that act as stepping-stones for people with significant barriers to learning to acquire the life skills that will enable them to manage their lives, contribute to their communities, re-engage in learning, volunteering and employment.

Projects to benefit today include grants to support people who are out of work or have never had paid employment, people with disabilities learning to live more independently and new opportunities for female ex-offenders re-integrating into the community.

Highlighting the importance of the programme, Big Lottery Fund Wales Country Chair, Huw Vaughan Thomas, said: “There is very little funding available for informal life skills work but Stepping Stones aims to fill that void. These projects will make a big difference in communities by enabling people to function independently, communicate and integrate with others and help them adopt healthy behaviours. In turn, these skills will help them participate in community life and maximise their training and employment opportunities.”

In a project encompassing the whole of Wales, The Construction Youth Trust organisation will literally be building for the future and will spend their award of £355,591 on a new project that seeks to take advantage of the huge range of roles available within the construction industry. The project will ensure that participants have the best possible chance of securing employment suited to their skills and ambitions.

Over 39 months, the ‘Construction for Communities’ project will employ a Project Co-ordinator and two Instructors who will take specially adapted mobile units into Communities First areas throughout Wales to deliver workshops on various subjects such as CV writing and interview techniques, and also taster sessions on various construction roles like carpentry, brick making and laying, and general maintenance.

The project will target economically inactive and low skilled individuals, disaffected young people currently not in training or employment, young offenders, long term unemployed, lone parents and the homeless and vulnerably housed. The project will initially operate in Neath Port Talbot and Rhondda Cynon Taff, centred on the areas of Sandfields and Penrhys with a view to extending the project into other Communities First areas later.

Female ex-offenders across Wales will receive support to face the major changes and long-term challenges in their lives when they are released from prison, thanks to £871,707 awarded to the Gibran Ltd group. The ‘Going Home’ project will help build their confidence, improve their self esteem, develop their communication skills and help them to develop the life skills to allow them to participate fully in community life and improve their employment and training opportunities. The project's innovative approach will use peer mentors, who are ex-offenders themselves, to help other women acquire the life skills they need to move out of dependent and chaotic lifestyles into volunteering, training and employment.

Finally, a grant of £601,724 will allow Deafblind UK to kickstart The Welsh Connection Self-Help project. Over three years it will establish 12 self-help groups across Wales, eight in the South and four in the North, with a target of 20 members (and 10 volunteers) in each. The groups will meet monthly and the Group Coordinators will provide a mentoring role for beneficiaries by delivering a range of training including organisational skills, independent living, sitting / gentle exercise and specific communications sessions to suit the beneficiaries' individual needs.

For further information about the Big Lottery Fund and how your group can apply for funding, log onto the Big Lottery Fund website www.biglotteryfund.org.uk

For further information about the projects, and contact details for the groups and organisations involved, please contact the Big Lottery Fund press office on the numbers below.

Big Lottery Fund Press Office: 02920 678 207
Out of hours contact: 07760 171 431
Public Enquiries Line: 08454 102 030
Textphone:  0845 6021 659
Full details of the Big Lottery Fund programmes and grant awards are available on the website at www.biglotteryfund.org.uk

Notes to Editors

• In Wales, the Big Lottery Fund is rolling out close to £1 million a week in Lottery good cause money, which together with other Lottery distributors means that across Wales most people are within a few miles of a Lottery-funded project.
• The Big Lottery Fund, the largest of the National Lottery good cause distributors, has been rolling out grants to health, education, environment and charitable causes across the UK since its inception in June 2004. It was 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 £20 billion has now been raised and more than 250,000 grants given out across the arts, sport, heritage, charities, health, education and the environment.

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