National Lottery Charities Board Yorkshire and the Humber

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Main Grants Announcements

Twenty-seven grants totalling £3,233,589 were announced on 2 November 2000 under the Community Involvement and Poverty and Disadvantage programmes.

Grants awarded in this round include £119,403 to Thorne and Moorends Citizens Advice Bureau, based at Thorne and Moorends, Doncaster. This grant will help to provide a specialist debt advice service to all their clients, giving clients support and help to repay their debts, increase their income and improve their budgeting skills.

BCAT The Black Sexual Health Organisation, based in Leeds has been awarded £136,444 to provide information and counselling to African Caribbean women on health problems.

Workers Educational Association - Yorkshire North has been awarded £170,698. The project will encourage parents in Scarborough and surrounding rural areas to take an active part in their children's education by taking up learning themselves. The grant over two years will pay for staff and running costs to give training and support to the mentors.

£17,455 was awarded to South Killingholme Youth Development Scheme (S.K.Y.D.S) to improve South Killingholme's only play area. The grant will pay for new play equipment, ensure the play area meets safety standards and provide a picnic/seating area to create a play park for all the family.

These are just a sample of the awards announced on 2 November 2000. A full list of awards is available on the awards database.

You will also find enclosed our latest Main Grants Statistics Tables. These have been updated to include the latest round of awards. As you can see, Craven is still holding top position.

For a Main Grants Application Pack please call 0845 791 91 91 OR the information from our website.

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Dates For Your Diary

Sue Tuffin, Regional Development Officer, writes:

Thank you to all those people who attended the round of meetings in September and October. I found your contributions very useful for expanding my knowledge of the region. I am looking forward to working with you on the many joint projects that were suggested.

Notes of the meetings and copies of the training materials requested will be sent to you soon. I have now fixed some dates for the next round of meetings. These will be all day sessions.

The changes to the grant programmes from April 2001, including new regional funding priorities will be covered in the morning. After lunch, there will be a more general discussion about funding needs and development issues. Please let me know if you have specific agenda items that you want to cover.

Dates for these sessions are:

• Wednesday 31 January 2001 - Centre 88, Hull. [Agencies working in the Humber].
• Thursday 8 Feb 2001 - Barnsley Town Hall [Agencies working in South Yorkshire].
• Tuesday 13 Feb 2001 - Priory Centre, York. [Agencies working in North Yorkshire].
• Tuesday 27 February 2001 - NLCB, Leeds. [Agencies working in West Yorkshire].

All these sessions will run from 10.30 a.m. - 15.30 p.m. with lunch provided. Further details and booking forms will be sent out in November.

The training and information sessions held in October were so popular that they were fully booked. Apologies to those who wanted to attend but couldn't. We were surprised, but pleased with the number of you interested in finding out more about our grants schemes.

So, we have set a new date for a repeat of this session:

Wednesday 6th December 2000 - NLCB Office, Leeds.

• 10.30 - 12.30 p.m. Awards For All programme.
• 13.30 - 15.30 p.m. Property Applications.

Lunch will be available for those attending both sessions. Invites will automatically be sent to those who confirmed attendance in October but were unable to attend due to the course being fully booked.

For anyone else who missed these sessions - if you would like to attend please call Christine Wan on 0113 224 5301 to book a place.

Please can you pass on the following information to groups you work with.

• Wednesday 17th January 2001 - Surgeries for Individual Groups. ½ hour appointments, running from 13.30 - 16.30 p.m.
• Wednesday 14th March 2001 - Surgeries for Individual Groups. ½ hour appointments, running from 13.30 - 16.30 p.m.

This is an opportunity to clarify policies and guidelines affecting individual applications. However, we stress that we cannot help groups to complete the form, or 'tell them the answers'.

These sessions will be particularly useful for groups who: -

• Have already attended a briefing or spoken to other NLCB staff.
• Have already started to put an application together or develop a project.
• Have not held a grant before.
• Have made previous unsuccessful applications.
• Have been recommended to attend by a local development agency.
• Work in our priority communities /areas.

Both these surgeries will be held at our NLCB Offices in Leeds. Please contact Christine Wan on 0113 224 5301 to book a place.

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Awards For All continues past Millennium

Awards for All has recently made its final round of awards under the Millennium Programme. Four hundred and seventy groups received a total of £1,476,075 which means that more than five million pounds has gone to local community groups across Yorkshire and the Humber during the Millennium Festival Year.

Awards for All continues in a slightly revised format. Groups can still apply for between £500 and £5000 for projects which support community activity, extend access and participation, increase skill and creativity or improve the quality of life.

We are currently receiving a large number of incomplete applications. This means that the application form is returned to the applicant and this is disheartening for groups who may have never made a funding application before.

Some of the main reasons applications need to be returned are:

• constitution not signed.
• bank statement older than 3 months or not an original.
• referee not professionally qualified to work with children and project is working with children.
• questions not all filled in.
• names on different documentation not the same, ie. the constitution, accounts and bank statement must all be in the same name as group making the application.

About seventy per cent of applications are currently returned to groups and we would very much like to reduce this number as the scheme continues.

Support agencies - please help groups you are in contact with by passing on this information to them.

Groups - if you are putting together an application for the Awards For All scheme and would like some advice or support, please do contact your local support agency.

If you would like contact details for your local support agency, please contact Christine Wan on 0113 224 5301 for a a list of support agencies in your area.

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Staff Changes

There have been quite a few staff and Regional Awards Committee (RAC) changes over the past couple of months.

We welcome Lisa Smith into the post of Regional Manager. Lisa, previously Senior Grants Officer at Yorkshire and the Humber office will be replacing Helen Wollaston who left at the end of October to take up the post of Director of Campaigns at the Equal Opportunities Commission in Manchester.

Lisa says 'I'm looking forward to returning to Yorkshire and the Humber as Regional Manager, having been working at the NLCB's corporate office in London for most of the year. Before that I was a Senior Grants Officer in the region so I hope I will be able to catch up with old friends in the voluntary sector and meet new ones over the next few months.

'Helen Wollaston has made a great contribution to our work in the region and will be a hard act to follow, but I hope that with the support of our Regional Awards Committee and all the staff here I will be able to build on that, ensuring that the NLCB continues to make a real difference to the voluntary sector in the region.'

Congratulations to Sharon Elliott who has secured the permanent Grants Officer post. Sharon was previously on a fixed -term contract until the end of March 2001.

Lisa Bennington will be joining the Yorkshire & Humber office to take up the balance of Sharon's contract. Lisa is currently a Grants Officer at the North West Office. We warmly welcome Lisa to the team.

Goodbye's and best wishes also go to Jonathan Nobbs (Grant Officer) and Judith Courts (Senior Awards Officer) who both left NLCB in October.

Jonathan's new post is Grants Officer for the Royal Society for Nature Conservation, based in Newark. Judith has decided to take a career break, due to personal circumstances.

Again, we wish them both all the best for the future.

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Regional Awards Committee (RAC) Changes

Goodbye and thank you to Roger Thompson who has left Yorkshire & the Humber RAC due to work pressures. Our warm welcome goes to Waheed Aktar who replaces Roger on the Committee. Waheed was intially shortlisted in the last RAC recruitment phase during Summer 1999. Waheed lives in Sheffield and works for Rotherham Borough Council as a Principal Regeneration Officer in Social Policy Research. He is involved as a committee member, advisor and group member of many Pakistani voluntary groups.

National Lottery Charities Board
2nd Floor, Carlton Tower,
34 St. Paul's Street,
Leeds
LS1 2AT

Phone: 0113 224 5300
Fax: 0113 244 0363
Textphone: 0113 245 4104

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