Near Neighbours Fund
The Near Neighbours Fund is targeted at creating additional relationships in local communities across boundaries.
Set up by Church Urban Fund and the Church of England, this is a rolling programme with no deadlines but it is due to end in March 2014. It will invest in environmental, social, cultural, artistic and sporting ideas which fulfill the following criteria.
1. Creating association
The overall aim of the fund is to encourage stronger civil society in areas that are multi-religious and multi-ethnic by creating association, friendship and neighbourliness. It intends to bring together people of different faiths and of no faiths to transform local communities for the better. First, by enabling opportunities for deeper levels of communication and understanding in local neighbourhoods, and secondly, by creating joint work, organizations or projects which address community needs. Strong and vibrant communities are dependent upon relationships of trust and mutual engagement and the fund aims to facilitate their development.
Key criteria therefore are pieces of work which do one of the following:
- Create First Encounters between people of different faith and ethnic communities and encourage the development of mutual understanding - initiatives which begin the process of developing associational life. These encounters can be key moments of transformation in a neighbourhood.
- Create Everyday Interactions at the everyday level of community life by encouraging families and individuals to come together regularly to eat together, jointly participating in religious and other festivals, encouraging children to play together in a neighbourhood.
- Create Civil Engagement which brings together people from different faith or ethnic communities to work together to change their neighbourhoods for the better. This will include establishing organizations and initiatives which have members of different faith communities.
2. Specifically local
Association can be built nationally, internationally and ‘virtually' but for most people their experience of civic life and of community more generally is a local one. The Fund aims to build association as deeply as possible in local neighbourhood contexts. So a key criterion is that grants are spent in ways which bring together people from different ethnic and faith communities which impact specifically locally. If there is the intention and likelihood of lasting relationships between human beings, then a grant is more likely to be awarded. We will look especially favourably on applications from diverse neighbourhoods and those with particular issues of deprivation and challenge.
In London, boroughs eligible to apply are Islington, Greenwich, Hackney, Lewisham, Newham, Redbridge, Southwark, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest
3. Small, quick...and transformative
We have lots of evidence at Church Urban Fund and from elsewhere of the transformative effect of small grants. Relatively small sums of money, quickly targeted to an emerging opportunity or initiative can provide the impetus for significant change.
Grants are awarded between £250 and £5,000
More information is available here
