Aspiring Communities Fund support for local project CAN
Community and third sector projects have been allocated a share of £29 million, to find new ways to tackle poverty and improve people’s lives. Among them is North Edinburgh’s Community Action North (CAN), awarded over £200,000 from the Aspiring Communities Fund.
The funding, which includes £12.5 million from the European Social Fund, supports the Fairer Scotland Action Plan, published last year. It will benefit around 170 community and third sector groups who will use the investment to deliver projects tackling inequality and supporting inclusion.
The new projects will enable communities to design, test and deliver innovative approaches to combat poverty and improve people’s lives, with each project having a longlasting impact for their community.
Communities Secretary Angela Constance announced the allocation during a visit to West Calder and Harburn Community Development Trust on Friday. The organisation will receive £247,000 to employ five development workers to engage with some of the most deprived communities in the area, working to identify and address barriers to participation and accessing community facilities.
Ms Constance said: “We aim to create a more equal Scotland and want communties to play a part in that. This funding will support local organisations to develop their own ways to address poverty and inequality, in their own areas. The successful projects will deliver tangible but innovative approaches to improve lives, based on local people’s priorities, and ensure a genuine impact for individuals and communities.
“For West Calder, that means new jobs, working with their most deprived communities. In other areas it will mean community food and health projects, tackling social isolation, providing nursery and crèche facilities, and increasing access to and use of community assets.
“What ties every project together is empowering and enabling people facing disadvantage to tackle it, with a positive and longlasting impact in their communities and on their lives.”
Matt Pearce, Manager of West Calder & Harburn Community Development Trust, said: “This funding will allow community development workers to be employed by five of the most disadvantaged communities in West Lothian.
“This new resource will allow each community to be able to make positive changes and improvements in a way that is decided by the local communities themselves and develop the local organisations to enable this to continue and grow.
“Working together across communities to share experiences, this will help those individuals and families most in need to have a say in the design and provision of initiatives in their own area and to support existing community organisations in their important work.”
North Edinburgh’s CAN recently produced ‘People Powered Community’ (below), a blueprint for partnership working to tackle the area’s deep-rooted poverty: Muirhouse currently ranks among the poorest ten neighbourhoods in the whole of Scotland.
The organisation plans to become a community development trust and is currently recruiting two development workers to take the project forward (details below):
https://goodmoves.org.uk/vacancy/33487
https://goodmoves.org.uk/vacancy/33486
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