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13 December 1999 Grants for innovation!Glasgow is to have a new training centre for people with long term mental health difficulties and addiction problems. A former coach-house in the city’s west end will be refurbished with a grant of £325,000 from the National Lottery Charities Board and the Coach House Trust will use the new centre to provide vocational and non-vocational training in a range of skills. In Edinburgh, a pioneering peer group counselling service which allows disabled people to provide support and advice for other disabled people has also received funding from the Charities Board. The grant of nearly £400,000 will enable the Lothian Centre for Integrated Living to pilot two new services - family counselling and telephone counselling. The grants are part of a package worth £7.3 million to Scotland’s voluntary organisations announced today by the Board. The grants will fund a number of innovative projects including Powerful Partnerships, a new organisation which will provide volunteer advocates to work on a one-to-one basis with people with learning disabilities, and Skerray Historical Association who plan to reinforce a sense of community in this remote highland settlement by involving the whole community in creating an archived history of the area. Announcing the grants, the Chair of the Scotland Committee, Kay Hampton indicated that in future the Board’s grant making would focus on its key strategic priorities. "We had some very difficult decisions to make in allocating funds this time round and those who have been funded have been successful against strong competition. "Our budget this year at £39.9 million is bigger than ever before but the Charities Board has become a very popular source of funds and we are receiving many more applications than we can fund. "With a drop in income forecast over the next two years we are going to be focusing our grant-making on some key priorities - which we have agreed with voluntary sector organisations. "We will be looking at targeting our resources in those parts of Scotland where poverty and disadvantage are concentrated and also at strengthening the voluntary sector so it can make a long term impact in meeting the needs of people at greatest disadvantage in society." For more information and arrangements to interview successful applicants contact Kay Caldwell or Kirsty Mullan on 0131 221 7100 or 0468 583441. Notes to editors1. A list of grants for each programme is enclosed. Please refer to both lists. |