Big Lottery Fund: Big green tactics to root out youth crime.

Big Lottery Fund: Big green tactics to root out youth crime.

Big Lottery Fund: Big green tactics to root out youth crime.

Green tactics are at the forefront of a multi-million pound BIG Lottery Fund investment announced today to tackle the root causes of youth crime and support struggling pupils.

Over £10 million in lottery good cause funding from the BIG Lottery Fund’s Changing Spaces programme is spearheading initiatives to motivate and involve often disaffected young people in their local environment and community spaces.

Crime Concern aims to use its £8.3 million funding to deliver 70 England-wide environment projects for young people at risk of anti-social behaviour or offending. The five-year Community Space Challenge scheme is to focus on re-engaging young people with their local communities and involving them in practical improvements to their neighbourhoods and give them a sense of pride in their community.

Activities will include development of community and sensory gardens, graffiti removal, allotment developments, litter clean-ups, park improvements, art installations and wasteland regeneration.

The projects will include young people who have been excluded or suspended from school. The scheme will offer them a chance to pick up qualifications for the environmental work that they undertake, which can be used instead of standard qualifications like GCSEs. Crime Concern’s partners – Encams, the Princes Trust and Changemakers – will provide the young people with education, training and employment progression as part of their work.

Rosie Chadwick, Director of Prevention Services for Crime Concern, said: “This is a great opportunity for young people to take the lead in improving local public spaces – something we know that many young people feel passionately about. They will be talking to other local residents about the improvements that people want to see. We aim to reach over 7,000 young people through this funding and far from being seen as ‘the problem’ they will be part of the solution.”

Bringing about a change of environment for children struggling in schools, is The Field Studies Council (FSC) with their £2 million grant. The Eco Challenge project will give 11-14 year olds in the lowest performing local education authorities the opportunity to learn about conservation issues and the environment.

Focused on disadvantaged pupils in 250 schools, including persistent truants or those with behavioural problems, the first stage of the Eco Challenge project will include residential courses at FSC Field Centres across the country. The courses will give young people a unique opportunity to get away from their usual urban environment, whilst learning about tree planting, fencing and more adventurous activities such as orienteering.

Once home, the young people will continue what they have learnt by carrying out work on their school grounds and local green spaces. The projects aim to improve self-esteem and general behaviour as well as benefiting the local environment.

Tony Thomas, Field Studies Council Chief Executive, said: “This £2 million grant will enable the Field Studies Council to reach out to over 7,500 pupils from schools in 22 of the most disadvantaged urban areas throughout England. The environmental activities that the young people will get involved in on our specially developed Eco Challenge residential courses will inspire them to take a more active role in local projects in parks or open spaces back home working with our project partner, the Civic Trust. We are convinced that these Eco Challenge experiences will have a long lasting impact on the pupils and communities which will continue on beyond the life of the project.”

Sir Clive Booth, Chair of the Big Lottery Fund, said: “Changing Spaces will open up a world of opportunity through organisations with a real understanding of the environment and social issues confronting us today. The funding responds to a range of issues such as youth crime by involving young people in environmental projects in their community.

“Children struggling in school will be skilled-up and empowered to revamp their school grounds and green spaces. More widely, the Changing Spaces schemes will tackle poor nutrition by helping communities grow sustainable, locally produced food, and also encourage communities to transform and learn more about their natural habitats encouraging people to be more active and healthier.”

The two young people’s schemes are part of a £47million strong Changing Spaces initiative being rolled out nationally today by the Big Lottery Fund. Three other large-scale environment schemes are being given multi-million pound awards. These are focused on community farming, community green spaces and regional environment studies.

The biggest of the Changing Spaces awards £15.6 million is going to provide a range of quality accessible green spaces throughout England run by The Places for People Group. This includes provision of play and youth facilities on estates suffering from lack of investment and problems of anti-social behaviour; community and sensory gardens including some specifically for elderly or disabled residents of sheltered housing.

Imperial College London has been awarded £11.7 million to study natural habitats through a system of OPAL’S – Open Air Laboratories. The OPAL network is an England-wide initiative that will encourage the public to engage with some of the country’s leading scientists and become involved in environmental projects tailored to their region. Open Air Laboratories could be anything from a window box to a sports field or the grounds of a business. Activities may include assessing the condition of local woodland or gauging traffic pollution and air quality.

The Plunkett Foundation is receiving over £10million for a bumper crop of initiatives to help local communities reap the benefits of locally produced food. The award will be spent across England to help communities, backed by expert help, to grow organic, fresh and local produce.

The project will ensure that produce can be distributed to communities that may not have good supplies of fresh local food, such as inner cities and more isolated rural areas. It will involve organising farmer’s markets, community-owned village shops and co-operatives.

Big Lottery Fund Press Office: 020 7211 1888
Out of hours contact: 07867 500 572
Public Enquiries Line: 08454 102030
Textphone: 0845 6021 659

Full details of the Big Lottery Fund programmes and grant awards are available on the website: www.biglotteryfund.org.uk

Notes to Editors

  • Crime Concern’s Community Space Challenge programme is made up of 70 projects across England.
  • Crime Concern is a national charity working for safer communities by reducing crime and anti-social behaviour throughout England and Wales. We work in over sixty neighbourhoods, with people at risk to give them positive routes away from crime and anti-social behaviour. To find out more about the work Crime Concern does with young people to reduce crime and anti-social behaviour, log onto www.crimeconcern.org.uk
  • The Community Space Challenge is delivered in partnership with: The Prince’s Trust, Encams and Changemakers. The Prince’s Trust helps change young lives of 14- to 30-year-olds in the UK who have struggled at school, have been in care, are long-term unemployed or have been in trouble with the law. ENCAMS is the independent charity behind the Keep Britain Tidy campaign, it also runs the Blue Flag awards for clean beaches, Quality Coast Awards and Eco-Schools. Changemakers is an independent charity and social enterprise which enables young people aged 4-25 to make a positive and continuing contribution to society.
  • The Field Studies Council Eco Challenge project will be operating in 22 Local Authorities across England
  • The Eco Challenge project is being led by the Field Studies Council and is being delivered in partnership with the Civic Trust.
  • The Big Lottery Fund rolls out close to £2 million in Lottery good cause money every 24 hours which together with other Lottery distributors means that across the UK most people are within a few miles of a Lottery-funded project.
  • The Big Lottery Fund, the largest of the National Lottery good cause distributors, has been rolling out grants to health, education, environment and charitable causes across the UK since its inception in June 2004.
  • On 1 December 2006 the Big Lottery Fund was officially established by Parliament and at the same time assumed the residual responsibilities of the dissolved National Lottery Charities Board (Community Fund) the New Opportunities Fund, and the Millennium Commission. The Fund is building on the experience and best practice of the predecessor bodies to simplify funding in those areas where they overlap and to ensure Lottery funding provides the best possible value for money.
  • Since the National Lottery began in 1994, 28p from every pound spent by the public has gone to Good Causes. As a result, over £20 billion has now been raised and more than 250,000 grants given out across the arts, sport, heritage, charities, health, education and the environment.