When applying for our funding, we want applicants to consider how their project can bring out the best in their communities, helping people reach their potential through shared knowledge, skills, and experience.  

In particular, when applying for our Community Action, Fairer Life Chances or Young Start programmes we want you to focus on telling us how your project will:  

• involve the people and community you support in how it’s developed, delivered and led  

• make use of their existing skills and interests  

• complement and make connections with other services that support them.  

A strong community-led project meaningfully involves the people and communities it supports in designing, developing and delivering the project. 

In this blog, we will share three examples of projects which demonstrate in different ways how they have meaningfully involved their community in their project.  

1.Thriving Survivors, Glasgow 

Thriving Survivors were awarded  £197,280 of National Lottery funding for their project providing a four-stage support model for survivors of childhood sexual abuse.  

The project’s work is proudly led by people with lived-experience. Their work includes mentors with lived experience who provide support to people throughout their engagement with Thriving Survivors. The group employs several methods to ensure that people with ‘living experience’ can feed into the design and development of the service, including through regular service evaluations.   

Thriving Survivors also has a lived-experience advisory group, comprised of individuals who have been through the support. This group feeds into the board and ensures that Thriving Survivor’s policies and procedures are reflective of their needs.   

We spoke to Ashley Scotland, CEO and Founder of Thriving Survivors, who shared:   

“Involving the voices of our community has been fundamental to our project’s success. By centering on the experiences and perspectives of those we serve, we have created a sense of ownership and belonging. This has led to increased engagement, stronger relationships, and better outcomes for our participants.  

We believe that true success lies in empowering individuals to take control of their own healing journeys, and that’s precisely what our community-driven approach enables.”  

What we like about this project 

Their Funding Officer, Daniel McCallum, said: “When I spoke to the group about involving survivors, they made the distinction between their lived experience as workers and the living experience of people currently living through this. They were articulate in their knowledge that their lived experience could be different from someone going through that today. The whole ethos was refreshing and breaking down a lot of stigma, with options for participants to advocate and share their experiences or shape the organisation in different ways.”  

2. Fersands and Fountain Community Project, Aberdeenshire 

Fersands and Fountain Community Project  was awarded £101,887 of Young Start funding to deliver a wide range of youth-led activities from their base in Woodside, Aberdeen. Activities include youth groups, a positive destinations group and a holiday programme.   

The project is driven by a youth committee, made up of a representative from each programmed youth group. This committee oversees all decisions made and are involved in managing, developing, supporting and monitoring youth work services. The youth groups are also given a budget for their term-time programmes that they use to design their activities. Every year, the group provides space for residents and young people to come together to see the work that has been delivered and give feedback.   

We spoke to Claire Whyte, Senior Community Manager at the organisation, who told us, “Our aim is to empower young people to lead their own programmes which fosters ownership and builds a stronger more connected community. At Fersands, we believe in the power of community-led services to create lasting change and inspire future generations”.   

For Claire, meaningful involvement means an organisation is “a service for local people by local people” and that those  “people feel seen, they feel the project is part of them and their community.”  

What we like about this project 

Their Funding Officer, David Lamont, said: “This project very much meets what we aim for in Young Start, the young people design the work, they deliver many aspects of the work and importantly, they meaningfully manage it.” 

3. Active Seniors, Glasgow

Active Seniors were awarded £63,815 of National Lottery funding to tackle isolation and loneliness through various social activities to people aged over 50 in the Knightswood area of Glasgow. These activities have included bus trips, cinema trips, walking clubs, karaoke nights and cultural trips.  

The project’s work was founded, and continues to be driven and led, by a dedicated volunteer committee comprised of older people. There is strong interest in this Committee, and they have recently adapted their constitution to ensure more people are able to join. The group also hosts quarterly meetings as an open forum for all members to give feedback and input into activity planning for the following quarter.   

We spoke to Eunice Lancaster, a Development Officer at Active Seniors, who told us, “Seniors in this community felt they needed more activities where they could meet old and new friends, but where they were in control, and it was not a service which was getting ‘delivered’ to them.”   

She continued, “Active Seniors is still run by a committee of eleven senior volunteers and has 161 ‘seniors’ members from aged 65 to 100 – these people still guide what is done and when. The committee are also well known in the neighbourhood and members recognise them and can ask or input their opinions directly.  An open feedback system means we are constantly looking to improve our service and keep activities fresh, enjoyable and fun.”  

 What we like about this project 

Their Funding Officer, Daniel McCallum, said “This organisation is grassroots, beginning with a lot of volunteers who saw a lack of activities for themselves and started doing this to bring people together. They have built mechanisms to be driven by the community and the community has really responded – they have huge engagement.”  

---

To find out more about what makes a strong project, visit our blog. 

Visit our website to find out more about our funding in Scotland.