WIREDGOV

Deputy Minister for Farming and Food, Rebecca Evans, recently visited an innovative scheme in Carmarthen to see how communities are making the most of the Rural Development Plan for Wales (RDP).

For the past two years social enterprise Spice has been working with Carmarthenshire County Council to develop the Time Credits programme which encourages local people to engage with their community and provide a service in doing so.

People receive Time Credits as a thank you for contributing time to their local community. Local groups then identify opportunities for people to give their time based on the interests, skills and availability of local people. They can then ‘spend’ Time Credits to access events, training and leisure activities, or to thank others in turn.

The programme now has more than 600 members, aged between 3 and 97 years. These individuals have given over 17,500 hours back to their community through the scheme through a network of 70 organisations.

The Deputy Minister said:

“The RDP enables us to fund activities like Time Credits which directly support our rural communities. This excellent scheme brings people together who might not normally meet and offers them the chance to enrich their community through their own good deeds.

“The new Wales Rural Development Programme will be the largest and most ambitious in Wales’ history and offers huge opportunities to develop our rural economies and tackle rural poverty.”

The Time Credits project has been supported through Axis 3 and 4 of the RDP for 2007-2013.

The Wales Rural Development Programme 2014-2020 could provide £953m of European and Welsh Government funding to rural Wales to help increase the productivity of our farming businesses, encourage sustainable management of our natural resources and promote strong, sustainable rural economic growth in Wales and encourage greater community-led local development.