Voluntary Action Leeds (VAL) has recently been working with Leeds Community Anchor Network members to deliver a new, exciting, volunteer-led programme funded through Leeds City Council and the UK Shared Prosperity Fund.  

The Neighbourhood Matching fund will run over 3 years across all six priority wards in the city.  Year one will see residents in Armley and Beeston and Holbeck be central to the delivery of the project.  Two more wards will join next year and then a final two in year three.  

‘It’s quite a simple concept’ said Rich Warrington, Social Action Manager at VAL ‘a group of community members come together and establish an aim for a project.  For every hour those volunteers give towards the shared aim, the project gets £10.   Each ward is awarded up to £12,000 to go directly towards a project.’   

‘It’s up to the group to manage the delivery of the project, with help from their host organisation.  The projects have been set up to be as flexible as possible, giving volunteers the opportunity to lead on the project and make the decisions, the key thing is that it’s beneficial to their communities, and the decisions are community-led’.  

The fund has been created by Leeds City Council via the West Yorkshire Combined Authority funded through UK Government and sits under the Service Transformation, Adults and Health Directorate. The concept though is older and is rooted in asset-based approaches to community work that first began in Seattle, US in the 1980s.  

“As part of the Asset Based Community Development programme we are currently undertaking a range of asset-based approaches to engage and empower residents in our city,” explained Verity O’Hara, Asset Based Community Development Manager at Leeds City Council. 

 “We are excited to work in partnership with Voluntary Action Leeds to explore working with organisations and residents based on asset-based principles to strengthen and mobilise community action on issues that are important to the areas in which they live, that build social infrastructure. We are very interested to see how this will develop over the next three years.”  

Community meetings began last month, in Armley, New Wortley Community Centre and Armley Action Team is working with a group of volunteers to make the local high street more beneficial to the community.

“We don’t know exactly what the project will entail yet”, said Victoria Kortekaas, ABCD Community Builder at New Wortley Community Centre, “but we have already met twice and have loads of brilliant ideas, it’s important not to rush in and make sure everyone gets a say, a key part in the process is joint decision making”.  

Beeston and Holbeck decided to tackle to project differently, with three sites across the ward working on separate projects, but collaborating regularly with the aim of supporting and learning from each project, and, of course, every hour helping other projects will also count towards their end goal!

Holbeck Together and Hamara will support activities in their area, and in Cottingley, Cottingley Community Centre will host the project.  

Christine Smart, Community Development manager at the centre said, “people always forget about Cottingley and some people don’t even realise we are in the Holbeck and Beeston ward!  We have lots of assets in the area and amazing volunteers, this project means we can invest £4,000 in our community garden. After our first meeting community members decided that they wanted to work to re-develop the community garden and also establish what kinds of vegetables we can grow that are appropriate to the diverse communities of Cottingley.’ 

Rich Warrington commented, ‘We hope that we can take all the learning from the first year into years two and three, we want to share the experiences of all the projects and create a template that could be replicated across the city’.  

Keep an eye out for further updates on Doing Good Leeds.  

 

 

 

Voluntary Action Leeds