8 July 2004
LOCAL COMMUNITIES RECEIVE A FURTHER £2.7 MILLION BOOST
The second round of funding from the Local Community Fund was announced today by the Minister for Social Development, John Spellar MP.
Announcing the total sum available, the Minister said:
"The Local Community Fund provided very practical and much needed support to some of our most disadvantaged communities last year; I want that good work to continue and therefore I am making a further £2.685 million available to these same areas this year.
"I was very impressed by the imaginative way in which some communities decided to use the Fund locally, developing activities and facilities to encourage local people to participate in community life, developing new skills and talents and improve their experience and quality of life. This is exactly what the Fund was set up to do.
"While these initial results have been very positive, I am also responding to concerns about the short term nature of this funding. Political and community representatives have persuaded me that more time is needed to make sure that communities realise the full benefits of the Fund, build up their experience and confidence and bring real benefits to their communities through better local leadership. This further period of funding will help them to do that.
"I know that some disadvantaged communities are not supported under the Local Community Fund. I am looking at how the Fund is deployed and will certainly consider views on its future direction once I have identified how we might change the mechanism for identifying areas in need. We hope to begin such discussions in the autumn."
NOTES TO EDITORS:
- The objects of the Local Community Fund are:
- to develop community capacity and leadership;
- to promote partnership working, within and between communities;
- to help communities improve their local environments;
- to develop intervention programmes with young people; and
- To encourage more active participation by women in local community services.
- Target areas were identified by the application of the Noble Indices of Multiple Deprivation supplemented by research undertaken by the Community Foundation of Northern Ireland, (CFNI).
- Deployment of the Fund has produced very positive feedback across the target areas. In Craigavon it has been used to refurbish a community house in an area of very high levels of deprivation where levels of physical isolation prohibit the local community to mix, the Fund’s intervention has resulted in a resurgence of local interest in the community association making it a much more motivated and influencing force in local issues.
- In North Down the impact of the Fund has been significant moving the community from a position of little community activity to an area where people are beginning to take a real interest and become involved. In the Dungannon area the Fund has supported an innovative approach of partnership working across existing community activities where sporting activities and skills have been used to involve young, old and disabled in a fun environment to develop capacity, leadership and responsibility. Further details of the positive impact of the Fund in other areas is available from the VCU, Department for Social Development, Level 3 Lighthouse Building, Gasworks Business Park, Ormeau Road, Belfast
- Work to develop measures of weak community infrastructure as a means of identifying and supporting areas of weak community infrastructure is continuing. The outcomes of this work will be used as a basis for discussion within the next few months on the future identification of areas of weak community infrastructure for support through the Local Community Fund.