Big Lottery Fund to fund young social entrepreneurs

Howard Lake | 3 August 2005 | News

Working with UnLtd, the Big Lottery Fund is to grant £10 million to help young people in England to make their community improvement ideas a reality.

“The Big Boost” programme, which goes live in September 2005, will award grants of between £250 and £5,000 to help individuals and small groups of young people, aged between 11 and 25 years old, deliver projects in their local areas. It will encourage social entrepreneurship among young people from all backgrounds, helping individuals develop projects, which will make a lasting difference to them and to their communities.

UnLtd has been selected as the Big Lottery Fund’s award partner to deliver The Big Boost under the Grants to Individuals strand of its new Young People’s Fund programme in England.

Activities that are likely to receive support range from school-based enterprises to larger scale, community projects, such as a counselling helpline for young people and a youth magazine which raises awareness of racism.

UnLtd, the Foundation for Social Entrepreneurs, is a charitable organisation that wants to support and develop the role of social entrepreneurs as a force for positive change in the United Kingdom. It will lead delivery of the Big Boost programme in partnership with The Prince’s Trust, Scarman Trust and Changemakers.

The programme will be launched in September 2005 with applications forms available immediately after that and it will be promoted through existing and new, youth focussed networks of UnLtd and its delivery partners.

About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale. He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.