Who's your hero? Is there a superstar in your area who deserves their moment in the spotlight?
The Be Proud Awards are a great way to celebrate the city's armies of volunteers who make 'Our Manchester' great, 
and to thank those extraordinary individuals and groups that work hard to help others. These people make a real difference in communities and help to improve local neighbourhoods.
On Thursday 18 August 2016 we announced the winner for our Spirit of Manchester 2016 Best Community Space Award – congratulations to Growing in the City! 
This is the first year of the Best Community Space award and we decided that you the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector in Manchester should decide the winner. We are delighted that over 700 votes were cast in our online vote.
The Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service is the highest award given to volunteer groups across the UK.
Any group of 2 or more people doing volunteering work can be nominated for the award. The majority of the group must be volunteers, and more than half the volunteers must have the right to live in the UK. 
The Community Life Survey is an annual survey commissioned by Cabinet Office to provide Official Statistics on issues that are key to encouraging social action and empowering communities, including volunteering, giving and community engagement. Headline findings show: 
Our latest data sets on our work with voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations and volunteers is now available on our website here: www.manchestercommunitycentral.org/policy-and-influence/open-data
Hello all,
It’s Monday 25th July 2016, we hope you all had a great weekend.
It’s the start of the School Summer Holidays and hopefully we get the sunshine to match!
Talking of summer, everyone is in a great mood and this is the time of the year where you can find lots of fun activities, festivals, summer fairs, and carnivals to get involved with.
Hello all,
It’s Tuesday 5th July 2016, hope you all had a great weekend.
Today I’d like to let you know about our Spirit of Manchester Awards 2016. We hold the Spirit of Manchester Awards in October every year and it’s our way of highlighting all the excellent work being carried out in Manchester’s voluntary and community sector.
Voting is now open to vote for the Best Community Space Spirit of Manchester Award 2016. 
Award criteria
A community space can be a piece of land or a building available for use by the community. Organisations needed to show:
• Best use of a community space
• How the space is seen as central within the community
• The impact it has within the local community
Hello all,
It’s the middle of June (although the weather wouldn’t suggest that!) and Volunteers week is over for this year.
What a great Volunteers week it was though. As you may know VCM put on two events this year. First up we had the Volunteer Surgery at VCM towers here in Swan Buildings and second was our Volunteer Fayre at Central Library on the 9th of June. Both events were a great success and they have definitely got us fired up for doing something bigger next year.
There are only 2 law centres in Bury and Rochdale, with the rest of Greater Manchester (and its 2.7 million people) effectively being a ‘law centre-free zone’. In addition to the increased 
number of people representing themselves, a recent report by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission citing the disproportionate effect of the legal aid reforms and law centre closures on women, disabled people and BME communities, the demand for a new law centre is clear.