New Community Fund launches for community groups and organisations that provide positive activities for children

Earlier this year, a range of new initiatives were announced in the mid-year budget, including the set-up of a new Community Fund

The Community Fund Grant offers three new grant funding opportunities that will support community groups and organisations wishing to provide activities and services for young people. This could include increasing and expanding current activities available to young people in the city, or initiatives that could assist with reducing anti-social behaviour.

The fund is split into three key parts:

• Youth Fund - £280,000 spread across two years (2021-2023) awarded to support youth groups, sports groups and charities in bids for time limited projects or seed funding for long term initiatives to engage with youth to address anti-social behaviour (the maximum award amount is £20,000 per year/ per applicant)
• Protecting Communities - £100,000 across two years will be made available to support capital works to combat crime and anti-social behaviour. As an example, fences and gates to stop motorcycles, and removal or installation of physical assets to prevent crime
• Strengthening Communities - £40,000 over the two years will be awarded to support bids for local campaigns or projects that can help tackle crime and anti-social behaviour, promoting safety and security in the area, and to help engage neighbours/ residents in communities by joining or starting local groups or associations etc. and strengthen their role in the city

Councillor Spiros Vassiliou, Cabinet member for Communities, Culture & Heritage comments:

“Through this new Community Fund, we hope to help kickstart activities and community involvement to strengthen the network of community groups and youth service providers in the city. We want to support and enable our communities to deliver and expand upon the positive activities which in turn, may help to combat and prevent anti-social behaviour in the city.

“Our young people have told us that they would like safe spaces to go, so we hope that with this new funding it will help organisations and groups to widen activities across Southampton, giving young people more positive things to do.”

The funding round for 2021/ 2022 will close on 19 November 2021.

For organisations and community groups who are interested in applying, and would like more information about the grants available, the Southampton City Council Stronger Communities team have arranged a webinar via Microsoft Teams on Tuesday 2 November 2021 at 2pm. Details on how to join, as well as application forms can be found on the Southampton City Council website Community Fund page.

To see the full list of grants for communities and to apply, visit Voluntary and community grants.