9 February 2001

New grant-making committee approves £4.2 million for Scotland's voluntary sector

Children who have lost a parent, brother or sister through murder are to receive new support from a lottery funded project. The National Lottery Charities Board has awarded £155,000 to Victim Support Scotland to research the needs of children after a traumatic bereavement. Victim Support Scotland will develop new services to meet those needs.

And Scottish women will receive training in political skills designed to enable them play a fuller part as citizens. Engender, the Edinburgh based group dedicated to achieving equality for women, will receive £133,000 to train women to deliver political skills training in their local communities.

Scotland's 139 Citizen's Advice outlets receive £193,658 towards the cost of exchanging filing cabinets for on-line advice, as the organisation moves away from a paper-based advice service to an electronic document management system. The Scottish Association of Citizens' Advice Bureaux will link up to a new system being introduced in England and Wales.

The grants are part of a £4.2 million package approved this week by a newly constituted grant making committee of the National Lottery Charities Board in Scotland. A total of 31 Scottish organisations will benefit from the grants announced today.

At its first full meeting, the three members of the committee appointed by the Secretary of State for Culture Media and Sport were joined by three members recruited by open advertising. The three have been recruited by the Charities Board during recent months in an effort to broaden the base of its grant-making committee and make its membership more representative of voluntary sector interests.

The grants package announced today will benefit almost every part of Scotland. It will provide community halls in Aberdeenshire, Angus, Argyll and Dundee, and will provide electricity for the first time to the community of Badrallach, on the shores of Little Loch Broom.

A grant of £247,345 to the Glasgow based Centre for Independent Living will create for the first time a city-wide register of suitable accommodation which can be accessed through computers by people with disabilities - removing the need for an arduous search by househunters.

The grants announced today bring the total awarded in Scotland by the National Lottery Charities Board to over £187 million.

For more information and arrangements to interview successful applicants contact Kay Caldwell or Kirsty Mullan on 0131 221 7100 or 0468 583441.

Click here for more information about the members of the Scotland committee.

Note to editors:

1. A full list of grants awarded can be found on the database of awards.