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£2 million Youth strand of the Building Connections Fund opens

17 Aug 2018 - 10:13 by michelle.foster

Eligible charities and community organisations from across England can apply for up to £80,000 from the Building Connections Fund Youth strand, to expand or enhance their work tackling youth loneliness. Coop Foundation

Funding, delivered by the Co-op Foundation, is available for projects that support any groups of young people within the most deprived 30% areas of England.

Grants can also support projects from any location in England that mainly benefit young people with any one or more of the following circumstances:
• Being a carer
• Being unemployed or precariously employed
• Experiencing bereavement
• Having a disability or long-term health condition
• Having been in the care system

What is the Building Connections Fund?
The £11.5 million Building Connections Fund is a partnership between Government, Big Lottery Fund and the Co-op Foundation, set up in response to the Jo Cox Commission on Loneliness to support projects in England that prevent or reduce loneliness.

The fund is split into two strands: the Main fund and the Youth strand.
Close to £9 million will be distributed from the Main Fund by the Big Lottery Fund, with grants of between £30,000 and £100,000 available. £4.5 million has been contributed by the Government, and £5 million from the National Lottery.
The £2 million Youth strand is made up of £1m from Government and £1m match funding from the Co-op Foundation.
You can apply to both strands if you have separate projects that meet the criteria for each, but you can’t apply to both strands for the same project. The Main fund closes on 24 August 2018, for more information visit:  www.biglotteryfund.org.uk/funding/programmes/building-connections-fund

How will funding be used?
Successful applicants to the Youth strand will receive funding to explore youth loneliness in greater depth, test youth-led innovations within their existing provision, and share their learning as part of the national Belong network.

Organisations can apply for up to £80,000, as follows:
Up to £10,000 (to be spent between December 2018 and March 2019) to engage young people in co-designing innovations to improve the impact of existing provision on tackling loneliness
Up to £70,000 (to be spent between April 2019 and March 2021) to implement and evaluate these innovations

Successful applicants will be announced in December 2018.

For further information and to apply, visit: https://blog.coopfoundation.org.uk/index.php/2018/08/15/2-million-youth-strand-of-building-connections-fund-open/

Deadline: Wednesday 26 September 2018

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