Information on Village SOS
Village SOS, a partnership between the BBC and the Big Lottery Fund
(BIG), will challenge villages to come up with brilliant ideas for
new businesses to help revive their communities, many of which are
seeing rural life eroded by economic pressures and the closure of
local amenities. Village SOS will invite rural communities with lots
of enthusiasm and a great business idea - from retailing to
manufacturing, the arts to leisure - to apply for Lottery funding to
help breathe new life into their area, create new jobs and improve
the quality of life for local people.
Eighteen villages will be shortlisted to receive a development grant
of up to £10,000, and will choose an enterprising ‘Village Champion’
to work with to advance their ideas. In May 2010 six of these
projects will then be awarded Lottery funding of up to £400,000 each
and their respective Village Champions will move into the villages
for a year to help them turn their business idea into a reality. BIG
will be searching for the villages and will fund the community-owned
rural businesses for their first year. During this time they will be
filmed for a prime time BBC One series set to air in Winter 2010,
presented by successful Bombay Bicycle Club entrepreneur Sarah
Wilmingham. The Village Champions will be recruited through a
nationwide search run jointly by the BBC and Make Your Mark. We want
to share our excitement about the value that entrepreneurial people
can bring to places, and as the people who run the
Enterprising Britain competition on behalf of the
Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform we know
more than most what that value can be.
So, we’re helping with the selection process and are hoping that
lots of enterprising people – from entrepreneurs through to
successful project managers and community activists – will apply.
The six funded villages will choose a Village Champion who will go
and live in that village for a year and get paid £30,000. So if you
are looking for a challenge and have always wondered what rural life
might be like,
why not apply? Deadline for both villages and
Village Champions to apply is 14 August.
Next steps
·
Link to
www.makeyourmark.org.uk/villagesos which outlines our
involvement and signposts to the BBC site (www.bbc.co.uk/villagesos)
for the Village Champions application form and to the BIG site (www.biglotteryfund.org.uk/villagesos)
for village applications. The BIG site also has web banners which
you can use on your own website
·
Please tag comments on Twitter feeds with #villagesos, and join the
debate at @makeyourmark
·
You could also write a guest blog which would appear on the Make
Your Mark site, or suggest content for our Village SOS and wider
Enterprising Places pages
·
Let us know if you would be interested in getting involved in a BBC
Learning campaign, which will accompany the TV series - likely to
include website with resources including funding available for rural
enterprise and outreach programme in rural communities - email
hannah@makeyourmark.org.uk with learning campaign in the subject
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