Invest in the West
A partnership Community Council PB Project focussing on the West of Shetland. Sandsting & Aithsting and Sandness & Walls Community councils submitted a joint bid to the Scottish Government Investing in Communities Fund to run a PB project to support community activity and development on their communities. They were successful in securing £30,000 of funding to distribute. The priorities for the funding were:
• Projects must benefit the Sandsting & Aithsting and Sandness & Walls Community Council areas, with specific emphasis on projects working with specific target groups e.g. older people, young people, people with additional support needs, individuals experiencing inequality whether through isolation, poverty, poor health etc.
• Projects should demonstrate organisations working to address inequalities within the communities, providing opportunities for inclusion and developing strong and resilient communities.
• Projects should support local assets, services and be responsive to the needs of the community, embodying a community led place based approach, specifically encourage collaborative working between organisations within the community. Working together to achieve stronger outcomes for the community.
• Projects may be completely new but they can also support and complement existing activity in the community.
The two community councils worked in partnership with Shetland Islands Council to deliver this project.
Applications were invited from all eligible community groups through local advertising/posters/flyers, through word of mouth, email and social media.
22 applications for funding were received and these were due to go to a community vote on Saturday 21 March 2020. Unfortunately this was then postponed due to the COVID 19 pandemic. The hope of the Community Councils was that they would be able to postpone until such time as it would be possible to hold an in person community event. However as the pandemic dragged on it became apparent to the Community Councils that the best course of action would be to run the event virtually to enable the funding to be distributed to the organisations.
New dates of 21st – 27th June was set for the virtual event. All of the original applicants were contacted to determine if they wanted to put forward their application for the final vote with 2 groups withdrawing their applications leaving a total of 20. The process and projects applying for funding were promoted through various means including flyers to every household in the area, posters, email blasts, social media, word of mouth and through the local media. There was also an onus put upon the groups applying to make sure that they engaged with their members and the wider community to raise awareness and encourage participation.
The projects were also showcased through a Facebook Event giving each group the opportunity to promote the impact their project would have. This was done through written submissions, video and photos with everyone encouraging participation.
The Community Councils developed a voting process using SmartSurvey which worked well with 398 community members voting. There was also paper based information and voting forms prepared and available to the community on request. 23 paper voting forms were received. A total of 421 people participated.
Of the 20 application received a total of 12 received full funding and 1 received part funding. 7 projects were unsuccessful and were subsequently contacted with signposting toward other sources of funding and support to hopefully enable their projects to happen. The projects will be monitored until successfully completed.