Stand Out In Darwen Neighbourhood Challenge

STAND OUT IN DARWEN NEIGHBOURHOOD CHALLENGE

Darwen Aldridge Community Academy (DACA) has recently received funding from Big Lottery to enable us to find out exactly what local Darwen people want and need in their community and respond to their requests.

The Big Lottery money will allow ‘Darweners’ to get involved and turn their ideas for the town into reality and continue the Stand Out In Darwen engagement with the community campaign.

As part of the project a ‘Touring Living Room’ will travel around community venues in the town encouraging people not just to say what they would like to do to improve the town but to nominate themselves as community pioneers.

These voluntary pioneers can bid for small pots of funding for any training and support needed to make their ideas a reality and will become members of a community passionate about driving forward projects to improve the town.

Our ‘Touring Living Room’ will start appearing around Darwen in May, if you would like the opportunity to host one of our sessions on the tour please get in touch.

We would urge anyone that has got an idea whether it to be to turn the piece of land at the end of their street into allotments, start a coffee morning in the town or hold an event at a school to enter the ‘living room’ and tell us all about your idea.

Initially the funding is for a year but DACA will be providing training days and workshops as well as searching for sponsorship from local businesses to ensure that the volunteers can continue driving their projects forward and keep topping up the money pot.

The funding has come from the Neighbourhood Challenge which is being run by the National Endowment for Science, Technology, and the Arts (NESTA) with support for the Big Lottery Fund (BIG). It will work with community organisations and community organisers to demonstrate how people, when equipped with the right skills and small amounts of money, can devise new and imaginative ways to get people involved in tackling local issues together.

For information of how you can get involved please visit www.standoutindarwen.com or call Jude Smith at DACA on 01254 819500.