Our Near Neighbours Co-ordinator, Revd Tim Clapton, blogs on the new money available to apply for in eastern London…

Near Neighbours has been running successfully for the past three years. Here at CTC, we’ve had the pleasure of co-ordinating the training and grants to the diverse communities of eastern London. So many amazing small projects have been boosted by receiving funding.

That’s why we’re delighted that £1.8 million in small grants has been made available over the next two years, for diverse local communities to develop relationships and transform neighbourhoods for the better.

This money is split between various centres across the country, offering financial support to gather local people to make a positive and lasting impact in their communities.

Grants between £250 and £5,000 are available, providing seed capital for local groups and organisations who are working to bring together neighbours, to develop relationships across diverse faiths and ethnicities in order to improve their communities.

The grants work alongside the wider programme. Near Neighbours works to bring people together in communities that are religiously and ethnically diverse, so that they can get to know each other better, build relationships of trust and collaborate together on initiatives that improve the local community they live in.

This is a rolling programme with no deadlines but our second phase is due to run until March 2016 and we expect the grants programme to close near to this date. We will invest in a broad range of work including environmental, social, cultural, artistic and sporting ideas but they need to fulfil our criteria which include:

1) Creating Association. We are looking to encourage stronger civil society in areas that are multi-religious and multi-ethnic by creating association, friendship and neighbourliness. The programme intends to bring together people of different faiths and of no faiths to transform local communities for the better.

2) Local and Sustainable. The programme aims to build association as deeply and sustainably as possible in local neighbourhood contexts. So a key criterion is that grants are spent in ways which bring together people from different ethnic and faith communities which impact specifically locally.

3) Transformative. We are keen to give grants that positively impact and transform the neighbourhoods in which projects run. Regardless of what the particular activity is we want to see it transform the local neighbourhood for good.

We have local coordinators working in your area. If you are interested in applying for a grant, or the wider work of the programme, they would like to hear from you.

If you’re interested in finding out more, contact me.

You can find out more from our website at www.near-neighbours.org.uk