If you want to help your community save or set up an enterprising service in your village, then help is at hand as the Big Lottery Fund’s Village SOS Roadshow comes to town.  Dunfermline will play host for the only Scottish date, which will be held at the Carnegie Conference Centre on Thursday 28 June from 10am to 3.30pm.

The day will include:

• Learning about exciting funding opportunities from the Big Lottery Fund
• Inspiring talks from experts and community organisers
• Interactive skills, workshops and exhibitions

You should come if you:

• Are passionate about rural revival but don’t know how to kick start your ideas
• Need advice and input for your enterprise
• Are from a community support organisation and want to know more

For more information about the event and details of how you can book your free place there, visit www.villagesos.org.uk . 

Announcing the funding totalling £823,508 Big Lottery Fund Scotland Chair, Maureen McGinn, said: “Today’s award will improve the lives of many local people, providing a range of opportunities for  moving forward with training and job prospects and positively engaging with the Calton community in which they live, while paying homage to the area’s rich heritage. We are delighted to be funding this project, which demonstrates BIG’s commitment to making a difference.”

Thenue Housing Association’s project, Calton Heritage and Learning Centre receives £823,508 from BIG’s Growing Community Assets programme to provide local people with social, learning and training activities at a community space that celebrates the history and industrial legacy of the area.

Charlie Turner, Chief Executive of Thenue Housing, said: “This is wonderful news for Calton and Thenue and will be greatly welcomed by our community. Calton has made a great contribution to the City of Glasgow and in the 19th century was a powerhouse of industry and commerce. In particular, Calton was renowned for being the centre of the weaving industry which was crucial to the growth of Glasgow as an industrial city.

“Even today local people remain proud of that heritage, which Thenue Housing and our partners believe is worth celebrating and preserving for future generations. We are immensely grateful for this Lottery award to create the Calton Heritage and Learning Centre which will also provide a vital community hub for people living in Calton.” 

Across the country 20 groups are sharing in grants totalling £863,106. Young Start aims to help young Scots aged 8 to 24 reach their full potential through a range of healthy, intergenerational, fun and employability projects. The investment comes from dormant accounts which are bank and building society accounts that have seen no customer-initiated activity for at least 15 years.

Announcing the first awards, Big Lottery Fund Scotland Director, Jackie Killeen, said: “These Young Start awards mark the beginning of a range of exciting projects that will boost the confidence and future prospects of thousands of young Scots. While not all projects will focus on employability many of them will give young people the vital skills and training that will prepare them for their future job search. Others will improve their physical and mental health while many more will allow youngsters to try new creative activities for the first time.”

Amongst the successful groups is the Callander Youth Project Trust which receives £46,700 to deliver the SQA Steps to Work Employability Programme to 18 young people aged fifteen and over from this rural area. The project will provide work placements, help with preparing CVs and other practical activities that develop employability skills.

Meanwhile in Glasgow young disabled people aged between 12 and 18 will be able to enjoy   range of activities including Wii competitions, table tennis and computer training, at the Tuesday Teens weekly youth club which receives an award of £38,953.

A full list of all of today’s successful Young Start groups can be found here

The Big Lottery Fund has teamed up with the Scottish Government to launch the Communities and Families Fund a new multi million programme aimed at helping Scotland’s children get the best start in life.

The £6 million fund will offer grassroots projects the chance to apply for funding of between £250 to £10,000 over the next three years. It will focus on improving early learning, health and wellbeing for children under eight years old by supporting them, their families and communities.

Speaking at the launch of the Communities and Families Fund launch at the Lottery funded Reidvale Adventure Play Association (RAPA) dad Barry McFarlane knows the difference local projects can make – no matter how small.

He said: “I went to RAPA as a wee boy. Before the centre was built, there was a skate park in that space. It was full of broken glass and used drugs needles. It was a mess. And I remember when the centre opened – it was such a big change! They even put in a new football park.”

“Now my wee boy, Kai, uses the centre. He’ll be eight in July. He used to be shy but he’s come out his shell. What I love most about the place is the environment: it’s a safe, supervised play area and there is never any trouble. All the staff help the kids to play and to integrate with each other.”

Aileen Campbell, Minister for Children and Young People added: “The Scottish Government wants Scotland to be the best place in the world for children to grow up and a key part of achieving that involves helping families and communities flourish.

“This new joint venture with the Big Lottery Fund will help make that happen by allowing communities to bid for a share of the funding for the kind of projects they need to improve the lives of local children and families such as playgroups and crèches or even to refurbish local playgrounds.

Liz Cameron, Vice Chair of the Big Lottery Fund Scotland Committee said: “This is all about giving Scotland’s next generation the best possible start in life. With this new £6 million fund we hope we can create new play and early learning projects as well as health and wellbeing schemes for children, their parents and also parents to be.”

The Communities and Families Fund is set to run over the next three years with £4.5 million from the Scottish Government and £1.5 million from the largest of the National Lottery Good Cause distributors the Big Lottery Fund. You can find out more about communities and Families Fund by going to: biglotteryfund.org.uk/communitiesandfamiliesfund

Watch the launch film here

Moving Up which opened to applications on 21 May has  £1.5 million to invest.  Funding is available for organisations working with the aforementioned groups who can demonstrate they actively engage with employers to encourage and support the career progression of individuals from these groups.

BIG’s research and consultation has shown that women, disabled people and people from BME communities are often frustrated by a lack of opportunity in the workplace. Labour market statistics also show that these groups find it harder to obtain work and progress to higher paid and managerial roles.

Carolyn Sawers, Head of Policy, said “BIG is pleased to be helping tackle workplace inequalities in Scotland. We all know that it can be hard to get a job but sometimes moving up is just as much of a challenge. This new funding complements the huge investment BIG already makes helping people get a job and gives extra support for women, disabled people and people from BME communities to move up in the workplace. Through the funding we hope not only to support individuals but give employers real tools and examples that will help change workplaces for the better in the long term.”

BIG is looking for a few, high impact projects that could be developed as models of best practice and share their learning beyond the life of a grant. Organisations interested in hearing more about the programme should contact our Moving Up team by emailing MovingUp@biglotteryfund.org.uk or calling our Enquires line on 0300 123 7110.

How can we help the organisations we fund to keep their good work going, and sustain the outcomes they’re achieving?

This question has been occupying us recently. In Scotland we have around half a billion pounds worth of grants  in management at any time. No two projects are the same of course, but a typical example – let’s say Project X – might be a grant to a third sector organisation of £400,000 over four years.

It may take Project X the best part of the first year of its grant to get up and running: recruit the right staff, perhaps engage contractors, maybe complete their finance package, formalise referral arrangements with partners, put their monitoring and self-evaluation approach in place. By year two they will hopefully be hitting their stride, and by year three, with a fair wind, they will be delivering the service they’ve always dreamed of in a way that is bringing real benefits to the people and communities they want to help.

If Project X  is truly at the top of its game, year three should also see it start to seriously consider and explore options for the future. Is the service/activity working, and either achieving or on the road to achieving the intended outcomes?  Is it worth continuing? Does it have the potential to do more?  What’s the best way of sustaining the work and the outcomes? What changes or improvements might be made? And who might fund or pay for this? Or, if it isn’t going to continue in its current form, what’s the best way to way to wind it up?

Too often, we find that organisations don’t start to consider the future until late in the life of their grant from us, and very often when there are only months to go. We remind them and ask about future plans, but sometimes this doesn’t make it to the top of the to do list until the final countdown has begun. By then, it’s often too late to build relationships with and demonstrate impact to other funders or commissioners, whose budgets may already have been committed, or who may be only able to provide very short-term funding.

The Big Lottery Fund is an outcomes funder, and we can fund organisations to continue work we’ve previously supported, if there’s a fit with the outcomes and priorities we’re committed to funding. We have to balance that with also enabling some new ideas and approaches to get off the ground, so we aim for a mix of the tried and tested and the new.

We expect ‘repeat applicants’ to be able to show us what they’ve learned, to evidence their impact and to demonstrate that they have robustly explored and considered a range of options on how best to continue their work.  We recognise that these are tough times to be running projects and managing organisations, but it is still disappointing when we receive last-minute applications, pulled together with little evidence of wider planning, from existing grant holders. These applications struggle in assessment, and will have a hard time getting through our Scotland Committee, who have to make difficult funding decisions on competitive funding portfolios.

So, my heartfelt plea to all Project Xs out there: don’t leave it too late to start thinking about your future funding. We’re happy to talk options through with you, and will be glad to see that you haven’t left it till the eleventh hour.

You can follow Jackie Killen on Twitter at @jackiekilleen

We’ve already visited 13 different areas across the country where we’ve met and spoken to almost a thousand people about potential sources of funding.

You can join them by attending one of our future events details of which can be found here.

At each event staff from BIG will be able to provide information on all our programmes in Scotland, including:

• Awards for All

• Investing in Ideas

• 2014 Communities

• Investing in Communities

• Young Start

A full list of programmes currently open in Scotland can be found here.

As well as providing an overview of the programmes available in Scotland, these half day events will give delegates an opportunity to meet on a one to one basis with a funding advisor from BIG to discuss your particular project and how we may be able to help.

To reserve a place at an event near you, please contact the BIG Lottery Fund by emailing bigscotlandinfodays@biglotteryfund.org.uk or call our team on 0141 242 1400.

They are amongst 25 projects from across the UK sharing in £25 million from BIG’s Realising Ambition programme which aims to scale up and replicate proven approaches that improve the prospects of 8-14 year olds and reduce first time offending. It is estimated that, in total, all seven initiatives working in Scotland will reach out to 46,824 of the most ‘at risk’ Scottish children.

An award winning Scottish mentoring scheme which has been proven to steer young people away from a life of crime receives £1,193,000. Plusone mentoring delivered by the  YMCA Scotland has already made an impact in Fife, Perth and Kinross and North Lanarkshire where it has been operating an early intervention programme since 2009 aimed at supporting children aged 8 to 14 whose behaviour is becoming a concern. Evaluation of the project has reported outstanding results with 86% of children showing significant  change in behaviour within six months including higher attendance at school and less disruptive behaviour in school. 

Another approach to be replicated in Scotland comes from the Children’s Parliament which receives an award of £319,965 to support vulnerable children aged 8 to 14 in Glasgow. They will work with the Community Initiative to Reduce Violence, a multi-agency initiative designed to reduce gang violence across Glasgow, to support children and their families at a key time when they have most likelihood of turning around negative habits. The project which has operated in Fife, the Western Isles South Ayrshire and Midlothian will now be rolled out to benefit 337 children in schools in north east Glasgow.

 A full list of projects which will be replicated in Scotland can be found here

Parents living with a learning disability are to benefit from an award of £520,088 through the Equal Say for Parents project, which supports vulnerable families. Over four years, 120 Glasgow parents can boost their confidence and self-esteem through group activities and training in parenting skills. The project will also help parents to better understand child protection issues and their children’s needs.

Cowal Elderly Befriending Scheme receives an award of £399,320 to improve the lives of older people living in rural areas. Fun social outings, one-to-one support and help at home will be on offer, enabling older people to stay independent in their own homes for longer. From repairing appliances and gritting paths, to emergency shopping or even feeding pets, this new service, delivered by outreach workers, is a welcome new addition to the project.

Announcing the funding totalling £4,366,209, Big Lottery Fund Scotland Chair, Maureen McGinn, said: “Today’s awards will fund eleven very different projects across Scotland which share one common aim – helping vulnerable people move onto a more happier and healthier place in their lives. The Big Lottery Fund is delighted to fund this inspirational set of projects.’

For details on all of the latest Investing in Communities grants can be found here.

Starting in Dunfermline on 26 April 2012, before visiting 10 other locations across the UK, the Roadshow will help people in rural areas to start community enterprises that will breathe new life into their village.

As well as hearing inspirational talks, the events will give you with the chance to vote on key issues, talk to sector experts, share with local practitioners and discuss ideas in 1-to-1 surgeries with a range of exhibitors.

The Dunfermline event will take place between 9:45am and 3:30pm at the Carnegie Conference Centre, on Thursday 26 April.

Book your free place here.

To find out more about BIG’s Village SOS programme visit our website