Council project wins nearly £400,000
A project in Hammersmith & Fulham is one of 12 across England to have been awarded grants as part of a £5.5 million Government scheme to encourage interaction between the young and the old.
According to the Government, the Generations Together campaign aims to break down barriers between younger and older people and help them “engage with each other on equal terms through mutually beneficial voluntary projects”.
The successful Hammersmith & Fulham bid will receive the full amount applied for: £398,900.
The money will be used to enhance intergenerational activity across the borough, focusing on more deprived areas, and linking Generations Together initiatives with the Council’s regeneration programme. The target areas include social housing estates, some with low-level violence related to gang culture, where there are high concentrations of older people and under-25s. Many of the former are said to live isolated lives and have little interaction with the rest of the community and younger age groups in particular.
The largest amount will help fund an online Intergenerational Volunteering Matching Service. The aim of this is to increase intergenerational awareness and skills sharing by matching younger and older volunteers with appropriate skills to particular projects run by organisations such as Age Concern and Barnardos.
One aim is to create new youth-run social enterprises that fill gaps in the service provision for older people, giving support to enable them to live independently at home, through help with shopping or accompanying them to GP appointments. Full training and apprenticeship opportunities would be offered and a number of permanent jobs created.
Support for tending and maintaining gardens is one area of need for older people, particularly on estates. A business would be set up to fill this gap in partnership with the New Deal for Communities (NDC) programme, with young volunteers trained to run and provide a gardening service in the North Fulham area.
Pots of “kickstart” funding up to £5,000 will be made available through the Council’s small grants scheme to community groups suggesting innovative ways of bringing older and younger people together.
Hammersmith and Fulham Chief Executive Geoff Alltimes said: "Hammersmith and Fulham is a diverse borough of economic contrast. Around one in five households earn more than £60,000, yet one in five earn less than £20,000. On top of that, we have all the other modern inner-city challenges with high levels of child poverty, transient communities, pockets of deprivation and populations of isolated older residents.
"The Council's ambition is to turn a borough of contrast into a borough of opportunity. We are delighted this project has Government-backing which is about working with our thriving voluntary sector to capture the energy and enthusiasm and improve the life chances of our youngest and oldest residents through a range of social initiatives."
Hammersmith and Fulham was one of 12 winning bids chosen from 132 applications across the country.
Dawn Primarolo, Minister for Children and Young People at the Department for Children, Schools and Families said: “These 12 projects will help to close the widening generation gap through volunteering and generate wider interest in and thinking about intergenerational work.
“The public often don’t recognise the valuable contribution which young people make to their communities, while older people are frequently seen as out of touch by the younger generation. It is important that these misconceptions are addressed and intergenerational activity can be a key element in helping people from different ages and backgrounds feel like they are part of the same community.”
The Generations Together projects will run during 2009-10 and 2010-11.
26 July 2009