New Hope was thankful and appreciative for receiving a substantial grant awarded from The National Lottery Community Fund (NLCF) for an exciting project, ‘Championing A Stronger Community’, in Birmingham in April 2019 for three years. This was made possible by the money raised by National Lottery players. The project focused on the community development and cohesion in terms of language development, career education, family bonding, basic counselling, parenting skills, improving health and wellbeing and personal development of the members of the communities of the inner-city areas of Birmingham.
The ethnic minority communities in the different inner-city areas of Birmingham experience multiple deprivations. People suffer from language barriers which prevent them from being integrated into society. The ESOL provision enabled our beneficiaries to develop their English language, helped social integration with other members speaking different languages, improved confidence to communicate in daily life and empowered them to live independent lives. Championing a Stronger Community tackled unemployment in Birmingham, which was one of the most severe issues we highlighted in our proposal and a cause leading to poor lifestyle and poverty in the region. To reduce poverty, our project focussed on career education and development to beneficiaries over 18 years of age, they were taught to gain basic career education and skills development training aiding to find suitable employment and job ready for the labour market.
