Big Lottery Fund

Royals join forces with BIG to support veterans

The Lottery-funded Forces in Mind Trust (FIMT) has launched, with the backing of The Foundation of Prince William and Prince Harry.

Over the next 20 years, the Forces in Mind Trust will provide UK-wide long term support for Service personnel and Veterans to make a successful transition to civilian life. The focus will be on addressing a range of problems that some ex-service personnel and their families can experience back in civilian life, such as poor mental health, family breakdown and alcohol-related problems.

The Foundation of Prince William and Prince Harry was set up by the Princes in 2009, and they share the priority of the Forces in Mind Trust to support personnel and their families through the challenges of returning to civilian life. The Foundation will back the Trust with its own grants over a three-year programme.

Peter Ainsworth, UK Chair of Big Lottery Fund, said: “By investing this £35 million, the Big Lottery Fund is supporting a ground-breaking programme of expertly designed interventions and activities, offering essential assistance, which will not only improve the lives of people directly, but will inform national policy and practice more widely.”

The Chairman of the Forces in Mind Trust, Air Vice-Marshal Tony Stables said: “As a first step, the Forces in Mind Trust will undertake a comprehensive review of the transition process from military service to civilian life for all service men and women, and their families.”

A pilot project at Catterick in Yorkshire will provide 12 months of enhanced support and guidance on employment, accommodation, educational needs, and mental health issues for approximately 1000 early service leavers from across the UK.

The Trust’s work will also include commissioning research to improve knowledge of the issues affecting veterans and their families, which will help shape new services and inform national policy. The Trust will also undertake awareness raising campaigns, and provide peer advice and support, particularly to those veterans who are most vulnerable.

The Trust continues BIG’s long-standing legacy of support for veterans across the UK. Since 2004, the Fund has given more than £88 million to programmes supporting veterans. The Fund’s Heroes Return initiative has enabled over 51 000 Second World War Veterans, widows, spouses and carers to journey back to the places where they served and fought or where their loved ones died.

For more information on FIMT visit our website

Small grants making a BIG impact

Friday nights will never be dull from now on for young people in an area of Dudley. High Oak Youth Group were awarded £9,982 at the end of last year to run recreational activities at its Friday night youth club. Young people have so far participated in peer mentoring, cooking challenges, projects in the community and even put on a singing show!

During Black History Month in October, the young people put their cookery lessons to the test by serving a three course meal that they made themselves to 80 members of the local community. Angela Edwards, youth worker said “At first the kids thought, oh my gosh, we can’t make a three course meal, but the cookery lessons gave them the confidence to see it through and they ended up producing a wonderful meal”.

Angela explains that not only have the activities given young people more confidence and helped them to engage more, but two new members of staff were recruited through the project, which have made a real difference to their lives too. “The staff have been able to blossom through their roles, becoming more empowered through their work with young people and growing in confidence themselves”.

“The funding has not just made a difference, it has allowed us to keep going, it’s been a massive thing for us, thank you Big Lottery Fund”

To find out more about High Oak Youth group go to http://www.highoak-youth.com

Projects like this one show us just how much can be achieved with a relatively small amount of money, but we want to see more!  If you have an idea for something that you think could change people’s lives in your community then what are you waiting for?  Visit our website at www.awardsforall.org.uk or call our advice line on 0845 4 10 20 30 to find out if you could apply and make your ideas a reality.

Lunch fit for a Queen

The Big Lunch is a very simple idea from the Eden Project, to encourage as many people in the UK as possible to have lunch with their neighbours, for a few hours of community, friendship and fun. This year’s event will be called The Big Jubilee Lunch and will proudly support The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations on Sunday 3 June 2012. The Big Jubilee Lunch is funded by The Big Lottery Fund and partnered by MasterCard and Kingsmill.

The best part of two million people took part last year, getting to know their communities whilst sharing a bite to eat, like Jess who helped organise Westfield Road’s Big Lunch in Birmingham.

'It was lovely to see young and old all sitting enjoying themselves and trying each other's food.’ Since the events, the community has organised other events locally, including a Planting Day. Without The Big Lunch Jess said "we would have found it difficult to find a platform for our collective voices; now we perceive ourselves as a community".

So what are you waiting for?  Free Packs are now available containing invites, posters, a wall planner, some seeds and much more to help you get started, simply visit www.thebiglunch.com or call the team on 0845 850 8181.

BIG People

This edition looks at things from a grant holders perspective, as Julie Duffy, Chief Executive of the What? Centre takes five with us.

• Tell us a bit about your organisation and your role within it
  I am the CEO and also a Psychotherapist at the What? Centre a Charity for young people providing therapeutic counselling and also advice and information on a whole range of issues of importance to young people such as housing, employment and training, health and debt.
• What do you love most about your job?
  Well, I suppose what I love most is that I know that every day our project makes a difference to young people.  It is not an easy job, sometimes we can feel sad about someone's situation but most often we can do something to support them. My greatest joys are when you can see continued improvements in their situations.
• What would be your hot tip for people thinking of applying to Big Lottery Fund?
  Really think about whether your project fits the funding stream, or it is a funding stream that will develop your work further.  Plan large chunks of time to work on it and get help and support from your CVS.
• Having been through the process yourself, is there anything you would do differently if you were to do it again?
  I would spend more time at home working on the bid or in a separate part of the building, you need to get the balance of working with others to get the ideas for the bid and then having space to concentrate on the wording.
• And finally, if you could be any animal in the world what would you be and why?!
  Well it has to be a lion - my favourite metaphor. I am a Leo and one of my daughters is also a Leo.  I am able to be caring and protect my family and the Centre, but also able to move around and scout the horizon for new opportunities for the Centre and myself.  I am currently working on my thesis for my MBA through the Open University and learning so much from people right across the world.

What's Local with you?

Village SOS began in 2010 when 10 enterprising rural villages were awarded a grant from the Big Lottery Fund to breathe new life into their areas through community business ventures. Six of these villages were featured in a BBC One primetime documentary series, Village SOS, which aired in summer 2011.

Today, Village SOS aims to build on the experience of these projects and inspire the nation to start up their own community enterprises. The Village SOS campaign includes a website and online community, an expert Advice Line (0845 434 9123), event roadshows, and a funding competition to help people get their community-led enterprises off the ground – phew!  But, it doesn’t stop there.  The Local is our new Village SOS magazine.  Launched last year it’s in its second issue and is all about celebrating success amongst social enterprises, offering support, guidance and inspiration to others wanting to set up their own rural business.

Read the latest edition of The Local

Still looking for more? The Village SOS National Conference will be held in Birmingham on 27 February 2012 and is guaranteed to provide you with the inspiration, ideas, help and support you and your community need.

The event will include the very best rural and community enterprise speakers, innovative and informative breakout sessions and feature the most inspiring rural community enterprises in the UK throughout an interactive day.

Get more information on this FREE event and how to book visit www.villagesos.org.uk/national-conference

Community Sustainable Energy re-opens for business

Following the past success for the Community Sustainable Energy programme, BRE our award partner for this programme has opened its doors for one more round.

The Community Sustainable Energy Programme has to date awarded £8.5 million to community-based organisations for the installation of microgeneration technologies, such as solar panels or biomass boilers and energy efficiency measures including loft and cavity wall insulation. It has provided £1 million for project development grants that have helped community organisations decide if they could benefit from a microgeneration and energy efficiency installation. The programme aims to achieve the following outcomes:

• Reduction in CO2 emissions
• Increased community awareness of climate change and how changes to our behaviour can reduce it
• Increased skills base of local trades (for example, local builders and building-service subcontractors working on renewable energy projects for the first time)
• Reduction in energy bills
• Reduction in reliance on imported energy and increased independence from commercial energy suppliers
• Stronger partnerships within local communities with lasting social benefits
• Growth of local enterprise in new technologies.

Please note that applications will be accepted for heat generating technologies and energy efficiency measures only.

Deadline for the receipt of completed applications is 5pm Friday 29 February 2012.

Visit the BRE website for all the details you will need to apply.

Latest West Midlands awards

Awards for All and Reaching Communities continued to spread festive cheer in November and December with a whopping £3.8million given to support a wide range of projects.

Aston Athletics Basketball Club was just one of those with a grant of £296,545 to continue its Hoops4Health project in some of Birmingham’s most deprived areas.  The club will provide a healthy living educational programme with professional sporting role models to children and young people. Using basketball as an activity, it will convey positive health messages and expand their employment opportunities by supporting skills training, work experience and qualifications, as well as promoting sport as a diversionary activity to keep them off the streets.

Nigel Hanson of Aston Athletics Basketball Club said: ‘Hoops4Health will educate 10,000 children whilst developing 50 new grass roots basketball clubs that will use sport, health education and fun as a catalyst for social change.’

Over 60 miles away in Oswestry, Shropshire, Cambrian Heritage Railways Ltd also celebrated with a grant of £9,910 to turn an area of unused railway land into a community orchard.  This project will give local people a chance to produce their own healthy food and access various skills training sessions to improve their future work prospects.

For more information about other proejcts we have recently funded, and how to apply to both Awards for All and Reaching Communities please visit our website

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Your views needed

Big Lottery Fund has launched a nationwide discussion asking voluntary sector and social enterprise managers working in both frontline and infrastructure support and development organisations to tell us how they think we should best use our funding to develop support to VCS organisations and social enterprises.

The Big Lottery fund has invested more than £200 million on capacity building for VCS organisations and social enterprises over the last ten years; our nationwide discussion is intended to stimulate debate and thinking to shape, influence and inform our future thinking and investment.

To begin to gather ideas and responses, we have posted an online survey. We will also be organising discussion events in 2012. A paper setting out the principles behind our future investment plans and an on-line survey is available on our website at  www.biglotteryfund.org.uk/buildingcapabilities . The deadline for responding to this discussion paper is 15 March 2012. We will then publish a revised paper which responds to and incorporates your comments.

We will be organising discussion events in different regions, and details will be available on the website in due course.