Stronger communities to be built with Community Chest funding

small grants thanks to its Community Chest funding programme.

The fund is part of the council's work to encourage active communities and the grants are for projects that help people to become more involved in their community, and that will improve the viability of places where local people come together.

The Cotswold Friends 'Friends Connect' project has been awarded a grant of £5000 to extend its current services of befriending, carer respite and community events.

This includes a service to help more isolated residents in the North Cotswolds to use tablets such as Hudls and iPads to connect with the outside world and learn new skills to help relieve loneliness and isolation.

Clients will be loaned a tablet on a six month trial and given weekly training from the volunteers at Moreton in Marsh library, or in their homes if they are unable to travel.

SoFabSports has been awarded a grant of £1041 to set up Gloucestershire's first disabled girls football team - one of only five in the UK. Known as a 'pan-disability team' it will be made up of footballers with differing impairments, playing together.

The team will take part in the GFA Counts League in Cheltenham and Almondsbury and give females with disabilities the opportunity to take part in football games in their community to improve their health and wellbeing.

The project will create two job opportunities for disabled people, and provide two coaches who will deliver 23 training sessions while taking part in the football league.

Cllr Ray Theodoulou, deputy leader of Gloucestershire County Council said, "I'm delighted that we've been able to offer more than 30 local voluntary and community groups a share of our Community Chest Fund. The grant is worth a total of £100,000 and aims to get people online who haven't had the chance before and create good relations between different groups of people in the community."

The initiative was put forward by Cllr Lesley Williams, Leader of the Labour Group at Gloucestershire County Council, she said, "We are all so happy that this initiative has been able to put funding back into our communities. We developed the community chest so that local organisations and groups could get just a little more help to make a big difference. I couldn't be happier."

Cllr David Brown, Liberal Democrat member of the assessment panel said, "We want to help build stronger communities in Gloucestershire and I'm delighted that so many local groups came forward with their wonderful ideas and requests for funding. It's great that we've been able to help more than 30 of them with a small grant from the Community Chest Fund. I'm sure that this will bring great benefits to the communities of which these groups are very much a part."

Local groups applied to the county council for funding earlier this year and the projects will all be delivered by the end of August 2016.