CF: Forever Manchester

Project name: Reducing Inequality Through Community Philanthropy

Grant Round: I

 

About: Forever Manchester (the Community Foundation for Greater Manchester) funds and supports local grassroots community activity, focusing on encouraging those living in communities to use their physical (buildings and spaces) and personal (skills, talent and experience) strengths and assets to devise and deliver solutions to the issues they identify. They do this through an Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) approach, which informs both community development activity (workers in communities) and our own grant-making.

Challenge: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages. Across Greater Manchester there are many communities facing multiple disadvantages such as poverty, lack of housing, poor health and lack of education. Such key deprivation markers combined, as well as a reduction in statutory community health and social care provision, result in poor mental and physical health and well-being which begins at a young age.

Solution: Increasing the connections that young people have within their community, encouraging them to recognize the ability they have to design and deliver solutions to the changes they would like to see. To do so, there was an educational program implemented in secondary schools, during which youngsters could: identify their own strengths and abilities, through a range of activities including a specially developed game, think about what already exists in their community which is available to them (asset mapping), identify the type of activity they would like to see in their community and explore the changes they would like to see as a result, identify which projects are both most wanted and most deliverable – what skills and assets do they have available to them to make their idea a reality, and facilitate, in conjunction with the school, project delivery.