West Midlands Mayor Andy Street has welcomed news that a Solihull charity is among eight groups to receive a share of £400,000 to pioneer news ways of helping improve community life.
The Colebridge Trust – which is recognised as the community development trust for Solihull – is to receive the funds, which are part of the legacy cash left over from the Commonwealth Games.
Mr Street, who grew up in Solihull, said, “When I negotiated with the Government to keep the £70million underspend from the Commonwealth Games here in the West Midlands, this was the kind of valuable project I wanted to see it fund.
“The Colebridge Trust is a well-respected charity which works to provide creative, innovative and enterprising activities to improve community life, and support disadvantaged neighbourhoods.
“Along with seven other similar groups from across the region, the Trust will use the money to identify specific projects that can improve their communities, and then act as a springboard to bring in further investment to help deliver them.
“Across the region we have around 10,000 organisations like the Colebridge Trust, operating in what we call the ‘social economy’, providing valuable jobs, training, housing and other services which are being delivered by local people for the benefit of local people. These are groups that simply want to do good for their communities.
“This is why, as part of our plan to use Commonwealth Games legacy cash to help widen their impact, we’ve decided to put money directly into their hands to help them identify and deliver even more ways in which they can make a positive difference to the lives and futures of local people.
“This is just the beginning of our £2 million investment in an important but little-known area of our region’s economy. I look forward to seeing how these plans progress and the positive impact they have on local people’s lives in 2024 and beyond.”
In the West Midlands, the social economy is already worth £3.5 billion a year and directly impacts the lives of over 250,000 people - as employees, volunteers or as beneficiaries.
This new £400,000 investment is the first phase of an action plan drawn up by the West Midlands Social Economy Taskforce, which was set up by the Mayor to look at what the WMCA and its regional partners could do to help double the size of the social economy so that even more local people benefit.