With thanks to and information courtesy of Slough CVS, Wokingham & Bracknell Involve, Reading Voluntary Action and West Berkshire Volunteer Centre.

Children in Need Small Grants
The Children in Need Small Grants programme is open to charities and not-for-profit organisations applying for any amount up to and including £10,000 per year for up to 3 years.

They give grants for projects working with children and young people of 18 years and under experiencing disadvantage through:

• Illness, distress, abuse or neglect
• Any kind of disability
• Behavioural or psychological difficulties
• Living in poverty or situations of deprivation

Application deadline: 11:59pm 2 December 2019

Find out more about Children in Need Small Grants

The National Archives: Cataloguing grants
Applications are now open for Round 3 of Archives Revealed’s Cataloguing Grants.

This strand awards grants of up to £40,000 for archives to create catalogues of archival collections. These grants are designed to:

• support the transformation of archive services
• help archives to improve access to collections
• help archives to increase public engagement with history and the UK’s documentary heritage

They will fund archives with collections that can:

• show clear local, regional, national or international significance, or significance to a specific audience group
• demonstrate a high level of potential to engage people and communities with archives and heritage

The next deadline for applications is 9 January 2020.

Find out more about The National Archives: Cataloguing grants

British Science Week Community Grant Scheme

The mission of the British Science Week Community Grant Scheme is to expand the audiences that engage with science and self-identify as having an interest in science by empowering and supporting community groups to run their own science activities during British Science Week (6-15 March 2020).
This grant scheme offers £500-£1000 for community groups that work directly with audiences who are traditionally under-represented in science activity.
The next deadline for applications is 5pm, Monday 11 November 2019.

Find out more about the British Science Week Community Grant Scheme

The National Lottery Community Fund –
Funding opportunities for community groups Are you looking for funding? Do you know any groups that are working hard to improve the places and spaces that matter to communities? We are here to help!

People understand what’s needed in their communities better than anyone and we are always looking to fund new projects that bring people together and build strong relationships in and across communities. In 2018/19 alone, The National Lottery Community Fund awarded over £500 million to projects that matter to communities and make a difference to people’s lives. Thanks to National Lottery players, our year-round funding is open to everyone. www.tnlcommunityfund.org.uk/funding

Canoe Foundation Funding
Funding applications from £2,000 to £10,000 are welcome from clubs, community groups and regions with an active interest in, and project purpose of, wider canoeing participation. Online funding applications via:
canoefoundation.org.uk/online-funding. Deadline 28 February 2020.

One Stop Store Carriers for Causes Grants
Community groups, schools, health bodies and charities can apply for grants to £1000 for projects to benefit local communities within 2 miles of the One-stop store. For details see: www.groundwork.org.uk/carriers-for-causes No deadlines; rolling programme.

Community Business Trade Up Programme
Funding & training for early stage community businesses available to £10,000. This is allocated in equal proportion to the additional income which your community business or organisation can generate from trading.
powertochange.org.uk/community-business
Deadline: Wednesday 27th November 2019.

Les Mills Fund for Children
Charities & NFP’s can apply for funding up to £1000 to support to improve the education and physical and emotional wellbeing of children living in poverty, or who have physical, mental health problems or disabilities lesmillsfundforchildren.org.uk/apply
Deadline: Tuesday 18th November 2019

Pocket Parks: Helping communities transform unloved or derelict areas into new green spaces

Programme objectives
Grants of up to £25,000 are available for new pocket parks and gardens or to support renovation of parks that have fallen into disrepair providing spaces for the local community to use, either as place to relax or for activities which will benefit the physical and mental health of local people.

What kind of community needs might a pocket garden support?
The renovation of parks or parts of a park should address specific local needs and lead to a significant increase in the use of the park, for example by:
• Bringing a children’s play area back into use.
• Encouraging local people to use parks for exercise and physical activities and improve physical or mental wellbeing.
• Bringing communities together to overcome social barriers, for instance younger and older people or people from different cultural backgrounds.
• Encouraging people to use the park who may be less likely to do so, for instance disabled people or people from BAME backgrounds.

Further details can be found here.

2020 Windrush Day Grant

The Windrush Day Grant scheme provides funding to communities looking to celebrate, commemorate and educate about the Windrush Generation and their contribution. Applications for funding will remain open until 8 December 2019.

Find out more about the 2020 Windrush Day Grant

National Garden Scheme – Community Gardens Award

Amateur gardeners from community groups in England and Wales are eligible for grants to create a garden or similar project with horticultural focus for the benefit of their local community. Maximum grant is £5,000 (but highest award last year was £3,000)

Deadline: 31 December 2019.

Find out more about the National Garden Scheme

Get Berkshire Active Activate Fund – round 2 opens on 14 October 2019

Get Berkshire Active (GBA) are managing the Activate fund on behalf of the Sports Council Trust Company (SCTC). The aim of the fund is to provide new physical activity and sport opportunities for inactive people living in deprived areas in Berkshire.

• Organisations can apply for between £750 and £2000.
• Applying organisations must have an income of less than £250,000.

• Round 2: opens 14 October 2019. Closes 25  November 2019. Announcements of grants awarded week commencing 9 December 2019.

For further details please click here.

Funding for Community Radio Stations 
Community Radio Fund will help support the core costs of running licensed community radio stations. It is open to community radio licensees. Grants from £2,000 to £20,000 have been given. See www.ofcom.org.uk/
community-radio-fund  for how to apply and application form. Deadline 5^th November.

Around a third of the UK’s bank branches have shut within the past 5 years, according to new research from Which?.

Hundreds more which remain open have reduced their opening hours, with some just open for 1 or 2 days a week. The shrinking bank branch network has been driven by a wave of closures by major high street names.

RBS closed 74% of branches, NatWest shut 49% and rural areas have been hit worst of all. A total of only 6,549 bank branches remain. In addition, Which? found 1 in 10 free-to-use ATMs have closed or switched to fee-paying in a 17-month period after major changes to how the network is funded. The consumer organisation reports that deprived areas are losing free cash machines at a much faster rate than affluent ones – forcing thousands of people in poorer communities to pay up to £2 per withdrawal.

In contrast, the 11,500-strong post office network- with 53% of branches in rural areas and 12% in urban deprived areas – is increasingly the nearest outlet for people to withdraw cash and access basic banking services. Citizens Advice is currently undertaking research into how well Post Office banking services are being delivered and what other banking services post offices could offer to support local communities. For further details see their new blog.

Locality, in partnership with Power to Change and Local Trust, worked with four local authorities on an action research project to show how councils can drive forward a radical new localism agenda.

71% of people feel they have little or no control over local decisions.

They’ve worked with community organisations, Big Locals, councillors and council officers in Cornwall, Southwark, Stevenage and Wigan to find out more about the drivers, enablers and barriers to localism.

How councils can shift power to communities
Locality’s report ‘Power Partnerships’ outlines the key ways for local authorities to shift power to people, build local capacity and ownership, and put neighbourhoods in the lead. This includes a six-step roadmap for councils to:

• Co-create the vision for localism with communities
• Match the ambition with internal organisational change
• Map community assets and governance capacity
• Invest directly in community infrastructure
• Embed the power partnership in community engagement and local governance
• Provide flexible funding for local social action.

To read more on this article and the full report please click here

Village halls provide the communities of England with ideal locations for local people to take part in the VE Day 75 celebrations taking place over the weekend of the 8^th – 10^th May 2020, in celebration of the 75^th anniversary of VE Day.

Town and Parish Councils are taking the lead throughout England in the organisation of local celebrations marking the 75^th Anniversary of the end of the war in Europe on the 8^th – 10^th May 2020.  After six years of fighting, the end of hostilities in Europe were officially announced on the 8^th May 1945 by Prime Minister Winston Churchill. That date has since become enshrined in history as VE Day.

VE Day 75, on the weekend of 8^th – 10^th May 2020, will be an international celebration of peace – a time to remember, reflect and pay tribute to the millions who played such a vital part in achieving it. This includes the Armed Forces personnel from many countries who gave their lives or were physically and mentally injured; the hard-working women and men who kept the factories, mines, shipyards and farms operating throughout the years of turmoil; the ARP wardens, police officers, doctors, nurses, firemen, local defence volunteers and many others safeguarded the home front.

SSAFA the Armed Forces Charity – which has been supporting service personnel, veterans and their families since 1885 – are the charity partner for this series of VE Day 75 commemorative events.

To view the planned activities over the 8th-10th May 2020 please visit– www.veday75.org to see the complete overview for this anniversary. It includes:

• The Playing of Battle’s O’er & VE 75 Years
• The ‘Nation’s Toast to the Heroes of WW2’
• The ‘Cry for Peace, around the World’
• Churches & cathedrals ‘Ringing out for Peace’
• Street parties and parties in pubs, clubs, Hotels, on town and village greens and in halls etc.
• Services of commemoration and celebration in churches, including the reading of the ‘Tribute to the Millions’ and the playing of the Last Post

If you are a parish, town council or village hall/community building in Berkshire and are running an event to celebrate VEDay75 please get in touch with us at admin@ccberks.org.uk or via our Twitter and Facebook accounts so we can share your news and help publicise it.