Village SOS for community projects

Village SOS offers free one to one support to community projects in Cheshire

More than 40 projects have received advice and support in the first 6 months since the re-launch of Village SOS, a £1.4m UK wide campaign funded by the Big Lottery Fund.

Accessing the expertise of a network of organisations across the UK, as well as network of trained Village SOS Mentors these projects are the first to engage with the Village SOS campaign and hopefully will act as inspiration to get more involved.

A community radio station, a small friendship circle/lunch club that provide a vital social facility for isolated residents, a large scale multi functioning community centre which offer a full range of services under one roof, and a heritage project which looks to create new employment locally are amongst the first projects receiving support.

Any project in a rural community of fewer than 10,000 residents, that provides a service could be eligible for support and they are being encouraged to get in touch to find out more.

Mark Reading of Cheshire Community Action said: "It's been a good start nationally and it is great to hear about such a wide variety of projects are getting involved with the campaign – I'm certain that projects across Cheshire and Warrington will benefit from learning from their experiences.

"Projects can receive support from us now to help them develop and progress their own plan of support, setting out the next steps to help them to become more sustainable. It's about planning for the future and helping projects to consider what next? Please sign up for support and we'll look forward to working with you."

One of the resources available to help projects to flourish is access to the Village SOS Mentors, a team of volunteers who have been trained to work with projects receiving support from Village SOS.

Village SOS has already trained close to a 100 mentors and are now looking for more volunteers who can help communities wanting to start-up their own enterprises or reinvigorate services locally. If you have a story to share – including setbacks, successes and celebrations – that could inspire and guide others then please get in touch.

To sign up for support, or to find out more about becoming a mentor, please visit www.villagesos.org.uk
or call Chris Cowcher on 01285 653477.

The two-year learning, outreach and engagement Village SOS campaign is delivered in England by ACRE and its network of 38 rural community councils

This article is from our news archive. As a result pictures or videos originally associated with it may have been removed and some of the content may no longer be accurate or relevant.