Irish community charity receives £90,000 from City & Guilds Group fund
Melanie May | 16 August 2016 | News
Dublin-based charity, An Cosán Virtual Community College (VCC), has secured £90,000 of funding from the City & Guilds Group’s £5m Skills Development Fund to deliver training to disadvantaged women.
The VCC is a new development, which builds on the work of An Cosán, a community education centre that has served the community of Tallaght West for 30 years. VCC was set up to provide accessible and relevant distance learning to those who have not benefitted from mainstream education.
The charity will receive the funding over two years for its Social Entrepreneurship and Leadership programme (SEL) which will reach 36 women, with the aim of rolling out across Ireland in the future. The programme aims to deliver training for leadership, social enterprise development and community sustainability to women who have been disadvantaged through unemployment, underemployment and lack of access to further or higher education.
The City & Guilds Group launched the Skills Development Fund in September 2015 to support projects and communities across the world to create long-term, sustainable change through skills. Grants have previously been awarded to four charities across the UK and Ghana: Afrikids, St Giles Trust, The Change Foundation and Global Generation.
Elizabeth Waters, director at An Cosán said:
“Our SEL programme will place social enterprise at the heart of disadvantaged communities by developing the women’s leadership and social enterprise skills so they can implement solutions and help create social change.”
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About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.