Mentoring Organisations: Funding (Hansard, 3 May 2001)

§ The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Lord Falconer of Thoroton)

In working towards our goal of encouraging and supporting new mentors, I am today pleased to be able to announce the launch of a Mentoring Fund grants programme.

With up to £5.3 million available over 3 years, the Mentoring Fund will provide grants for mentoring organisations to:

enhance or extend their current mentoring activity;
develop schemes in new geographical areas;
reach new audiences.

This will enable more volunteer mentors to be available where they are needed, on the ground in local areas.

This Government also recognise the need for a national infrastructure to promote, develop and celebrate mentoring and to establish a framework of national quality standards for local mentoring schemes. I am therefore pleased to announce that we will be awarding the National Mentoring Network a grant of £1.05 million over three years to develop the infrastructure of mentoring. I am also pleased to announce that to team up new mentors with mentoring opportunities, we are investing a further £1.4 million into Mentor Points.

We also want to make it easier for people in community groups to apply for government funds. So we are happy to announce the publication today of a consultation document on funding community groups. This sets out a number of proposals that aim to ensure that in the future government small grants programmes will be more integrated, and that application processes will be simpler and more accessible to local community groups. The document also explains how the Government plan to establish and operate the new Neighbourhood Renewal Community Chests, announced in the National Strategy Action Plan in January 2001. I have today placed a copy of the consultation document in the Library.

We recognise the independent role of the voluntary and community sector in building strong communities, and the need that organisations and groups, and the individuals involved, have for "capacity building" support to help them fulfil that role as effectively as possible. In addition to providing strategic funding to over 60 national infrastructure organisations, the Government have earmarked funds for:

an integrated database to provide comprehensive and co-ordinated information;
a major training programme to support charity trustees;
a media awareness training programme for volunteer bureaux;
an integrated database of social entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial organisations to facilitate better networking.

The Government are also announcing today funding totalling £320,000 over three years to the Federation of Community Work Training Groups to develop the infrastructure for Community Development Learning.