WIREDGOV

An organisation working with young people across north Belfast’s interfaces is one of 70 groups in Northern Ireland sharing in a grants windfall of £592,282 from the Big Lottery Fund’s Awards for All programme. 

A full list of awards is available here

The small grants programme has awarded £6,500 to Cliftonville Community Regeneration Forum Limited for a project that will give young people the opportunity to organise a summer fun day in the Waterworks Park on 12th July.

It comes as Big Lottery Fund celebrates its 10th birthday, having supported more than 7,000 community projects and invested £302 million across Northern Ireland.

Awards for All offers community, voluntary and statutory groups the chance to apply for small grants of between £500 and £10,000 that will have a big impact on local communities and the lives of people most in need. 

Cliftonville Community Regeneration Forum Limited is an umbrella group for community groups that work across interfaces in the Cliftonville and Antrim Road areas of north Belfast.

The family fun day takes place in the Waterworks Park in north Belfast on 12th July between 1pm and 6pm. It is being organised by a team of young leaders, with support from Let Youth Lead, which is a youth project from Cliftonville Community Regeneration Forum.

Karen Rice, outreach and detached youth development worker for Let Youth Lead, said: “We don’t have a youth centre in the area so for us it’s really important to get out on the street, engaging with young people and encouraging them to get involved in positive activities and learn new skills.

“As we know, the summer is a highly contentious period and there’s more risk of young people engaging in a range of risk taking activities, therefore we felt it was necessary to be out on the streets encouraging them to get involved in the wide range of youth activities and programmes that will be running across the area.

“By getting involved in planning and running community events, young people are directly changing the perception the local community have of them. We’ve had comments from people within the community on how good it is to see young people getting involved in these sorts of events and taking a leadership role too.”    
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Karen said that the young people who get involved with the programme are gaining organisational, communication and team building skills as well as taking on a positive role in the community. She said: “From previous community events we’ve done you can see the sense of pride from the young people who have helped organise the events. The young people are becoming role models to the younger ones who ask ‘When can I do that? When can I help out?’”          &n bsp;            &nbs p;                           &n bsp;   

Paul McMenamy, 18, is one of the young people involved in organising the 12th July event. “I don’t have any extra-curricular activities in school so being involved in the club has really helped with my CV and application to university and kept me from just running about the streets. I’m helping to plan the fun day on the 12th July, organising the volunteers and games for the younger ones,” he said.

The Family Care Society, which provides services and support for families and children involved in adoption and care across Northern Ireland, also received £9,960. It will use the grant to produce a DVD of Life Stories that will encourage and support young people to take part in its Life Story project. It supports young people aged between eight and 20 who are involved in the care system to map their lives from birth to present.

Rosemary Hurl, Chief Executive of the Family Care Society, said:  “When children are taken into care, they often don’t know what is happening. Children rely on us to help them feel secure and to help them understand. Some people think that work like this is a luxury, but every young person who goes into care - be it for four weeks, one year or permanently - needs help to make sense of it all.

“We felt that a DVD could have more impact and convey information about this work in a way that is more accessible to young people than giving them something to read. We hope to get young people who have been through the Life Story work involved in the process of producing the DVD.”

Joanne McDowell, Big Lottery Fund NI Director, said: “The Big Lottery Fund’s NI Awards for All programme funds health, education, environment and community projects that help people bring about positive change in their lives, improve health and well-being, develop skills and create safer communities.           &n bsp;            &nbs p;                           &n bsp; 

“The application process is simple and accessible and shall remain so, making it easy for applicants to successfully apply for small pots of funding that can have such a big impact on local communities and lives.”

Application forms and guidance notes are available to download atwww.biglotteryfund.org.uk. For more details call us on 028 9055 1455, or e-mail us atenquiries.ni@biglotteryfund.org.uk

FOR MEDIA ENQUIRIES - PLEASE CONTACT
Lucy Gollogly, Big Lottery Fund Press Office: 028 90 551 432 (office hours)
Out of hours contact: 07740 284 404

Notes to editors

• The Big Lottery Fund is responsible for giving out 40% of the money raised for good causes by the National Lottery.
• The Fund is committed to bringing real improvements to communities and the lives of people most in need and has been rolling out grants to health, education, environment and charitable causes across the UK. Since its inception in 2004 BIG has awarded close to £6bn.
• The Fund was formally established by Parliament on 1 December 2006. 
• In the year ending 31 March 2013, 28% of total National Lottery revenue was returned to the Good Causes.
• Since the National Lottery began in 1994, £31 billion has been raised and more than 400,000 grants awarded across arts, sport, heritage, charities, health, education and the environment.