Blantyre received some wonderful news in March 2019 when Coalfields Regeneration Trust awarded several community groups a total of £20,000!
The Coalfields Regeneration Trust is a registered charity that works across former Coalfield towns and villages, offering grants to help organisations meet community objectives.
Coming to Blantyre in 2018, the award follows several months of activities liaising with the initial ‘Blantyre Steering Group’ (now Blantyre Futures) and engaging the public directly during multiple events.
The recent fun day at Blantyre Sports Centre was one of the Coalfield’s largest successes, with over 700 people attending, smashing attendance records, despite us being the 46th community to go through the process, so well done Blantyre! Those attending that event got a chance to vote for their favourite proposals to be funded, and along with many hundreds of surveys returned, the steering group made their funding decisions as follows:
Blantyre Youth Development Team were awarded £4,471 for the young people at Terminal One to fund fitness equipment.
Blantyre Girl Guides were awarded £2,120 to provide new tents, camping equipment, flags and sports equipment.
Blantyre Community Committee were awarded £4,155 to buy chairs and tables for the outdoor annual gala events.
Family Learning Action Group were awarded £2,000 towards their holistic therapy training and room hire. The group run family programmes in the local area.
Blantyre Project was awarded £1,048 to buy two TVs for the library and Livingstone Centre to display old photos of Blantyre and to provide a full set of children’s history books into five Blantyre primary schools.
Hyper Cyber Youth Project in High Blantyre was awarded £3,735 to assist with their annual rent burden and for activities for the kids who attend.
and finally David Livingstone Trust were awarded £2,471 for equipment to assist their archiving tasks of artefacts.
We’re sure you’ll agree, these are all great choices for Blantyre and will make a difference. Thank you to the public for their choices and to everybody who took part.
This process is only the beginning. Data collected is very interesting and will now be used to form a 5 year plan to improve Blantyre. It’s hoped the whole process will “open further doors” for funding Blantyre organisations.
On behalf of all the above organisations, Blantyre Futures would like to say thanks to Coalfields for their generosity, valued input and for making this possible.