Charity and Voluntary Sector
10DS: The PM visited troops in Afghanistan last weekend and announced £3.8m for troops' families & veterans' mental health projects. A project to build a Bastion Memorial Wall at the National Arboretum in Staffordshire has also been awarded £300,000 in the latest tranche of funding from the £35m Armed forces covenant (LIBOR) fund.
UKOC: Do you work with people who would benefit from improving their maths skills? Would you like to help shape a major new project aimed at improving numeracy across the UK? A new national charity is asking you to do just that.
Recently, National Numeracy (www.nationalnumeracy.org.uk), a relatively new charity dedicated to improving low levels of numeracy in the UK, began piloting their National Numeracy Challenge. This initiative encourages individuals to raise their numeracy skills to at least the minimum standard necessary for everyday life.
UK online centres are supporting National Numeracy in piloting this initiative which runs between 24 June & 12 July when staff & volunteers are invited to take the Challenge.
CO: The Cabinet Office is supporting probation staff who are considering ‘spinning out’ of probation trusts into mutual organisations and has now signed the first contracts with suppliers providing over £500,000 of specialist support.
The first cohort includes 7 spin outs covering 11 probation trusts. This means that groups of staff from within nearly a third of the UK’s 35 probation trusts are actively preparing to bid for services in the national competition for rehabilitation services - which the Ministry of Justice plans to roll out by early 2015.
BIG: A project to improve the lives of street children in Kenya has received £505,000 from the Big Lottery Fund. The grant to Railway Children is among 6 awarded from the Fund’s International Communities programme, which supports projects tackling the causes of poverty & deprivation and the impact they have on people’s lives.
HMT: The government has outlined proposals for one of the biggest reforms of Gift Aid rules in recent years. These reforms will make it easier for charities to claim tax relief on donations made online or by text message, ensuring that more money goes to good causes – See ‘Policy Statements & Initiatives’ section for more information.
ScotGov: The Debt Arrangement Scheme (DAS), a Scottish Government debt management tool which allows individuals & couples to repay their debts over a longer period, has been improved to benefit more people in Scotland - See ‘Policy Statement & Initiatives’ section for more information.
