£eith Chooses 2022-2023 is accepting applications up until 30 September.
Want to apply for funding (up to £5,000) but need some advice or help with your application?
Come along to the Learning Centre (upstairs at McDonald Road Library) and talk it over with a member of the Steering Group, who can advise you how best to frame your project application.
From 4pm
On Wednesday 31 August and / or Wednesday 7th September 
We would like to invite new people to join the £eith Chooses Steering Group, whether for a longer or a shorter period, to bring new ideas and new energies to the process and to try to ensure that different aspects of the local community are as well represented as possible. Could this be you?
This is a voluntary position. You need to be someone who lives, works, volunteers, or studies in Leith. We are looking for ‘working members’ – that is, people who have time to attend meetings fairly regularly (mostly online currently), and to contribute actively. You could ask to attend a couple of meetings as an ‘observer’ if you’d like to learn more about how it all operates.
Please get in touch if you are interested. Email: secretary@leithlinkscc.org.uk
The clock is ticking, now. Just 27 days to go – please don’t put it off until the last minute!£eith Chooses has £56,102 for charities and community organisations serving the community in Leith, and is accepting applications NOW, until 30th November.
This year’s theme is one that everyone can find a point of contact with:
Reconnecting in Leith:
Nourishment, Creativity, Sustainability
If you are a constituted community group with your own bank account, and are thinking of a project (12 months max) that would benefit the community in Leith, please download and fill in an Application Form, and Guidance Notes, from the links below.
| format | Application form | Guidance notes |
| DOC (older versions of Word) | Application form | Guidance notes |
| DOCX (newer versions of Word) | Application form | Guidance notes |
| Application form | Guidance notes |
Talk to us! Don’t leave everything to the last minute!
There will be another online (Zoom) general Q & A session about applying to £eith Chooses this coming Tuesday 5 October 2021, at 6:30pm. This is a good chance for an informal chat about a possible application, and to clarify any queries you may have. Do join the call, you will be very welcome!
Register to attend via Eventbrite here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/eithchooses-2021-22-applications-qa-tickets-170120002507
As well as – or instead of – this Q& A session, Information and support (private discussions) for applicants will be also available at any time / on an ongoing basis, as requested,
Contact: caroline.lamond@edinburgh,gov.uk
Applications are OPEN NOW for £eith Chooses 2021-2022. There is £46,102 available from City of Edinburgh Community Grants Fund, supplemented by a further £5,000 donation from Port of Leith Housing Association. Community Groups can apply for up to £5,000 for a 12 month project that will benefit members of the community in Leith.
This year’s theme is:
Reconnecting in Leith:
Nourishment, Creativity, Sustainability
If you are a constituted community group with your own bank account, and are thinking of a project that would benefit the community in Leith, please download and fill in an Application Form, and Guidance Notes, from the links below.
| format | Application form | Guidance notes |
| DOC (older versions of Word) | Application form | Guidance notes |
| DOCX (newer versions of Word) | Application form | Guidance notes |
| Application form | Guidance notes |
The following groups / projects received the largest number of votes from the Leith community, and will receive funding through £eith Chooses 2021, for projects
that challenge food poverty in Leith and/or that reduce isolation /help people get / stay connected, in Leith.
The total amount allocated is £51,102.
The figure below, per group, is the amount the group applied for
Empty Kitchens, Full Hearts – £5,000
Sikh Sanjog’s Punjabi Junction – £4,330
Edinburgh NE Foodbank – £5,000
Multi-Cultural Family Base – £4,510
Edinburgh Community Food
& MILAN ‘Leith Bowl Blethers’ – £4,400
Building Bridges – £2,180
Edinburgh Remakery – £4,620
Edinburgh and Lothian Regional
Equality Council (ELREC) – £5,000
Projekt 42 – £4,700
Citadel Youth Centre – £5,000
Dr Bell’s Family Centre – £3,630
PIE Scotland – (£5,000) – £2,732 (partial funding)
Many Congratulations! These projects will benefit the Leith community in many different ways, through the energy, work and commitment of the great project teams listed above.
Sadly, because of the limited funding available and the nature of participatory budgeting, not every applicant can be successful. The groups and projects whose names do not appear above did not win funding on this occasion.This is no reflection on the quality of their projects, which were all excellent. The £eith Chooses team is always finds this distressing, just as the project groups must do. Thank you for participating, don’t give up, you could be lucky another time.
Any project applicants who wish private feedback on their application, eg. number of votes received, and how their vote total compared with that of other projects etc. are most welcome to email in for this information to Caroline.Lamond@edinburgh.gov.uk
Feedback and Evaluation
A short survey will be circulated in the next week or two to allow everybody to feed back any observations they may have about the £eith Chooses 2021 process. Please do respond!
There will also be an open ‘Feedback’ discussion session online on Tuesday 9 March, at 6pm, to review and discuss in more depth all/any aspects of the 2021 £eith Chooses process. All welcome, and all views and contributions will be listened to and taken on board for future events. Do join!
When you go to the voting site, you will be asked for your email address and your postcode, so have these ready.
If you live in Leith you should know your postcode, but if you work or study or volunteer in Leith you may need to check in advance and note the postcode of the building where you go for this.
Anything within the black line on this map.
Please vote, next week! As Monty says, £eith Chooses needs YOU!
To plan who you mean to vote for, you can preview all the excellent projects here.
Do you know people who are struggling, at the moment? The Scottish Government is providing an additional £350m to councils, charities, businesses and community groups to support communities affected by coronavirus.
Click here for news of special funding opportunities
The funding is designed to be flexible, cutting down on red tape to enable them to respond swiftly and according to local need for people impacted economically or through reduced contact with society, including anyone struggling to access food.
Included in the emergency funding package is the £40 million Supporting Communities Fund which community groups can apply for to support local people at risk because of age, isolation, carers, homeless people and asylum seekers and signposting people to sources of help such as applying for benefits.
There’s also a £70 million Food Fund which will help organisations in the public, private and voluntary sectors address issues of food insecurity, especially for older people, and families who may not be able to rely on free school meals.
A Wellbeing Fund of £50 million will help charities and others who require additional capacity to work with at-risk people who may be worst affected by the crisis, including homeless people and those experiencing fuel poverty.
£20 million will be allocated to a Third Sector Resilience Fund, to help ensure the health and continued viability of the third sector organisations affected by cash flow and other issues.
For more information on the funding and to apply, please contact SocialJusticeMailbox@gov.scot
For full details of the announcement please visit Scottish Government website.
In these extraordinary times, the £eithChooses Steering Group has been thinking about the ‘digital divide’ that separates those who can from those who can’t benefit from modern technology. We have put together a short paper – £eithChooses Tech Guide– which provides some basic guidelines to help charities and community groups to avoid wasting valuable resources and to deliver the most useful support to their service users.
Many people in Leith are unable to access the internet and so cannot benefit from online resources due to a lack of money to buy their own computer/laptop/tablet/smartphone, or pay for internet connections. Or they are cut off by a lack of knowledge and skills, or a lack of training and support. With the schools, libraries and other public resources closed, currently, and no staff to assist, they are doubly excluded. Being on the wrong side of the ‘digital divide’ is both a result of inequality and a cause of additional inequality.
Children in this situation lose out educationally at the best of times, and especially currently while the schools are closed, with teaching and learning moving online. Even when the schools reopen in August, it is likely that a proportion of education will continue online.
Many charities and community groups in Leith are very aware of this area of need and are trying to help, in various ways.
But before buying technology for someone, it’s important to check (1) whether they could benefit from funding through one of the government or local authority schemes, and (2) that the right technology is being bought. Nobody wants to waste money or effort getting the wrong thing, or something that won’t do the job it is needed for.
If you feel it could be useful, please download and pass the paper on to any of your colleagues, staff and service users, as you feel appropriate. The paper includes easy to read information on:
Download here:
£eithChooses Introduction page for charities and community groups
Please note that the information and advice contained in the paper is offered in good faith, but may not be appropriate in all circumstances. It is obviously wise to also ask for advice from others who may be familiar with the buyer/user’s needs, and to ask the supplier to confirm that the item is suitable for the particular circumstances of the purchaser. It is also wise to get a receipt from the supplier, and ideally a warranty for the equipment. £eithChooses cannot be held liable for any consequences of equipment purchase.
These are extraordinary times, and extraordinary solutions are called for.
In the weeks since lockdown, the £eithChooses Steering Group and the community projects that won £eithChooses 2020 funding have been working together to come up with alternative project designs that stay within the original themes of £eith Chooses, but that are adapted to the current emergency situation. We are happy to report that this is going well, and we are confident that public money will be well spent to the benefit of vulnerable people in Leith.
Adapting their project has been easier for some organisations than for others, just because of the original design and focus of the various projects. Several projects that focused primarily on ‘fighting hunger’ have moved over to making available/delivering food to their service users in this time of emergency (rather than pursuing their original aims of people eating together, in various settings). This was felt by the Steering Group to be entirely appropriate, as it is recognised that many people are really struggling at this difficult time.
Projects that were focused primarily on ‘fighting social isolation’ have a harder job, since ironically – and tragically – enforcing social isolation is the main strategy, globally, of fighting the spread of corona virus! Online communication (Zoom) has become a major tool of course. However, recognising that many (and often the most vulnerable) people do not have access to the technological equipment or the knowledge and skills to use online communication, some projects are setting up phone-based systems to alleviate loneliness for isolated service users, to help identify people with urgent needs and problems, and to provide advice and support.
Several of the applicants that received funding through £eith Chooses are already well launched on their adapted project. We have set a deadline date of 28th June 2020 for all projects to finalise their adaptation plans (bearing in mind that the project has to be completed by 31 March 2021, due to the terms of the funding agreement), The £eithChooses Steering Group continues to communicate regularly and to meet weekly online, so that suggestions and discussions are ongoing, and decisions about proposed adaptations can be turned around very quickly.
The Steering Group has also launched discussion about possible scenarios for 2021.
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