Author Archives: Sally Millar

£eith Chooses goes live!!

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We have lift-off!

Happy to announce that we can now reveal to you all the exciting projects that are applying to £eith Chooses for funding, this year.

Deliberation
You can find the list of 25 projects here, and you have about 6 weeks to browse through all these projects and think about which you would like to vote for when the time comes. Remember to tell your friends, family and colleagues to have a look too.

Voting
Voting will open on Saturday 18th January 2025. You can come along to the Leith Community Centre on that day, and meet all the project applicants in person, and place your votes in the ballott box there and then.

Then there will be a further 2 weeks of online voting. If you didn’t manage to get to the in-person day at the Community Centre, you can vote online. If you DID vote at the Comunity Centre, you can ALSO vote once online.

Please remind your friends, family and colleagues to vote, too. Everyone who lives, works, volunteers or studies in Leith is eligible to vote.

Voting closes on Monday 3rd February 2025.

All Details must be received by 18th November

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Please would all applicants be sure to submit the final details that have been requested by the Council £eith Chooses team by 18th November at the latest, or their application may not be able to go forward. In many /most cases this is just a small matter of sending in quotes for planned costs over £300, and/or their organisation’s image  (for the online gallery of projects).

This will allow time for applicants to review the online gallery and accept or amend their project title before 1st December when the gallery describing all of the projects applying goes live for the public to view.

After that date, all organisations should start ‘canvassing’ for votes amongst their supporters and amongst the general public at large. Tell everybody about the project you hope to do, and keep reminding them to come along to the Voting Day and also to vote online, in January.

 

Applications Closed

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Applications to £eith Chooses 2024-2025 are now closed. Thanks to all who have submitted an application. You should have received an email acknowledgment of your application – please get in touch if you have not:
leithchooses@edinburgh.gov.uk

It will take a while for all the applications to be processed. In the meantime, someone may contact you to clarify some points about your proposed project. You will be notified as to whether your application is going forward within a few weeks.

Good luck everyone!

Deadline for Applications coming up……….

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Please get your application in NOW for £eith Chooses 2024-2025!
The deadline for applications is 10 October 2024.

 The theme this year is Leith Uniting.

Local charities and community groups* can apply for project funding of up to £5,000.
As usual, projects should be new or adding new value (not continued funding of an existing service) that will be of benefit to the community in Leith. Projects should be designed to start after 1 April 2025 and run until March 2026 at the latest.

Please do ask for help and support in putting together your application if you wish. Contact leithchooses@edinburgh.gov.uk Please submit your application as early as you can – or let us know that you are intending to apply – that then leaves time for any questions or adjustments that may be necessary, and avoids the stressful ‘last minute rush’!
*only organisations that have a Constitution and a bank account may apply

Please download an application form here, and be sure to also download and study the Guidance Notes, to help you ascertain if your project is eligible, and to guide you in putting together your application. Various formats are available:

format Application Form Guidance Notes
DOCX Application form (DOCX format) Gu
idance notes (DOCX format)
DOC Application form (DOC format) Guidance notes (DOC format)
PDF Application form (PDF format) Guidance notes (PDF format)

You can also pick up a paper form at Leith Library, McDonald Road Library, Leith Community Centre, Out of the Blue, or Duncan Place.

The vote will be in January 2025.

Apply Now to £eith Chooses!

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Please get your application in for £eith Chooses 2024-2025!
The deadline for applications is 10 October 2024. The vote will be in January 2025.

The theme this year is Leith Uniting.

Local charities and community groups* can apply for project funding of up to £5,000.
As usual, projects should be new or adding new value (not continued funding of an existing service) that will be of benefit to the community in Leith. Projects should be designed to start after 1 April 2025 and run until March 2026 at the latest.

Please do ask for help and support in putting together your application if you wish. Contact leithchooses@edinburgh.gov.uk Please submit your application as early as you can – or let us know that you are intending to apply – that then leaves time for any questions or adjustments that may be necessary, and avoids the stressful ‘last minute rush’!
*only organisations that have a Constitution and a bank account may apply

Please download an application form here, and be sure to also download and study the Guidance Notes, to help you ascertain if your project is eligible, and to guide you in putting together your application. Various formats are available:

format Application Form Guidance Notes
DOCX Application form (DOCX format) Gu
idance notes (DOCX format)
DOC Application form (DOC format) Guidance notes (DOC format)
PDF Application form (PDF format) Guidance notes (PDF format)

You can also pick up a paper form at Leith Library, McDonald Road Library, Leith Community Centre, Out of the Blue, or Duncan Place.

£eith Chooses 2024/25 opens for applications this week!

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Hope everyone is enjoying the summer! Here’s the latest news from £eith Chooses –

The new theme for £eith Chooses for 2024/2025 is Leith Uniting.
Hopefully this is open enough to allow for all sorts of creative interpretations. We will look forward to hearing your ideas for new projects.

Applications are opening early, so you should have plenty time
Along with the ‘back to school’ bustle, £eith Chooses will be open for applications from Wednesday 14th August. You will thus have the full school term to prepare and submit your application (until mid October). But please make good use of this long preparation time, and don’t leave everything until the last minute…!

Get Support
At our ‘community conversation’ day in May 2023, many groups expressed a wish for support in putting together their application, and we are very happy to offer as much support as necessary. It’s a good idea to get in touch early, to make the most of support opportunities. Contact can be made via: leithchooses@edinburgh.gov.uk

The new Application Forms and Guidance Notes will be available very soon, from this site. Watch this space! Paper copies will also be available to be picked up from the Leith libraries, The Leith Community Centre, Out of the Blue, and Duncan Place.

What stage is £eith Chooses at, now?

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Well! Tying up loose ends and ramping up for next year, in a nutshell.

Since April, all last year’s monies have been paid out to the groups that won funding in the January 2024 vote, so those groups are hopefully all already well launched with their proposed projects. These projects run between April 2024 and 31 March 2025.

The £eith Chooses Steering Group (SG) has been busy writing a report and carrying out an evaluation of the 2023-2024 project, and as soon as that is signed off by City of Edinburgh Council (soon!), that will be posted publicly for all to read.

The SG has also been planning the next ’round’ of projects and voting, for 2024-2025, and updating the paperwork in preparation.

The Theme (provisionally, for now) is LEITH UNITING

The timescales are as follows:
16 August 2024 – £eith Chooses open for new applications
10 October 2024 – applications must be completed and submitted
January 2025 – Voting (online and in-person – exact dates to be confirmed)
by 31 March 2025 – all funds will be disbursed to project groups

Another job is to collect in the project reports from the projects that were voted for in 2023 and which ran from April 2023 – March 2024. We do not ask for much, in the way of reporting, so hopefully it is not too cumbersome for groups. It is really important though; groups that do not submit a report are ineligible to apply for funding again the following year

What is £eith Chooses up to now?

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The past month has been a busy one for paperwork and finances as the community groups that won funding in the recent £eith Chooses voting liaise with the Council staff arranging payment of the funds so that these arrive into their bank account before the end of the financial year. Hopefully all done now!

 

So what happens next?

  1. The groups that won funding will shortly get started on their new projects, hurrah!
  2. £eith Chooses Steering Group and Council staff partners meanwhile take a step back and check that the groups that were funded LAST YEAR have complied with regulations and have submitted a report on the completion of the project they were funded to deliver by 31 March 2024. We do not require long complicated reports but do require evidence of spending and basic info about what took place, how it all went, who benefitted etc. We do like to see photos, too! This is a really important step, because if a group does not submit a report on a past project, they are not eligible to apply again in future for funding for another project.
  3. £eith Chooses web site and social media will be used to publicly share some of this information as feedback, so that Leithers can all see what happened following their vote back in 2023, and what benefits were brought to the community in Leith. This is a good way to remind everyone about the great work that so many charities and local groups are carrying out al the time on behalf of the community in Leith.
  4. The £eith Chooses Steering Group carries out a review and evaluation of the recent £eith Chooses event, with the aim of maintaining standards and ideally improving the process for future years. If anyone wants to share their views on how things could be improved, please submit by email to: leithchooses@edinburgh.gov.uk
  5. The £eith Chooses Steering Group considers what ‘theme’ next year’s £eith Chooses might focus on. Any ideas? Email to: leithchooses@edinburgh.gov.uk

Tonight! Join £eith Chooses online feedback session – link here

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You are warmly invited to join the £eith Chooses team online for an informal ‘Feedback Forum’ tonight Tuesday 5th March at 6:30pm. This is a chance to air your views about any aspect of the £eith Chooses process, to ask questions and get answers, and to make suggestions about how the process could perhaps be improved in future. All welcome.

£eith Chooses feedback session. 6.30pm Tuesday 5th March.
Microsoft Teams meeting

Join on your computer, mobile app or room device
Click here to join the meeting

Meeting ID: 396 208 832 988
Passcode: Xu8CNh

Download Teams | Join on the web

Feedback please? Tuesday 5 March, 6:30, online

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Now that the voting results are in and the grants have been awarded to 13 local community groups, the next stages of £eith Chooses are:

1. Feedback – this is for everybody – successful and unsuccessful applicants, voters, volunteer helpers, and any/all Leithers. Please join the £eith Chooses team online for a ‘Feedback Forum’ on Tuesday 5th March at 6:30pm. This is a chance to air your views about any aspect of the £eith Chooses process, to ask questions and get answers, and to make suggestions about how the process could perhaps be improved infuture. Please do join the discussion. A Teams link will be posted shortly.
2. Paperwork – the groups awarded funding need to fill in the required paperwork, and the Council staff on the £eith Chooses team need to progress that paperwork through the Community Empowerment & Engagement Dept.and on to Finance, for payment. The sooner your completed paperwork goes in, the sooner you will get the money.