Progress project awards £30,000 in bursaries to voluntary sector

This week 30 voluntary and community sector training providers receive bursaries of £1,000 through the Children’s Workforce Development Council’s (CWDC) Progress project. Every region across England will benefit from this opportunity.

The bursaries support these organisations to become accredited training centres. Many of them will help deliver 25,000 training places to the young people’s workforce by April 2011. These groups will receive direct financial assistance, but many more who applied will also benefit - having access to expert advice and guidance that will support them to attain accredited status.

The Bristol based arts organisation, Artivists received one of the bursaries. Their spokesperson Rita Gupta said:

“We are truly delighted to receive the bursary of £1,000 from the Progress partnership. It’s going to make a huge difference to our organisation in 2011. The bursary will allow us to step up our activities in several ways including increasing our capacity to deliver to a wider range of service users and referral agencies”.

Isabelle King, Training and Accreditation Officer for the project’s lead partner, the National Council for Voluntary Youth Services (NCVYS) said:

“Becoming an accredited training provider can be challenging but with the investment in the young people’s workforce this project provides, we’re able to work with a great range of groups to help them along this path. Being accredited can make such a difference to a voluntary sector body – not just in providing quality training to the young people’s workforce but giving a strong signal to funders and commissioners about the standards to which their staff and volunteers are trained.”

Steve Crisp, Director of Sector Investment at CWDC said:

“These bursaries are a key element in supporting the delivery of the 25,000 accredited training places within the Progress project. They will increase the number of accredited training providers so that learners from the young people’s workforce can access the support they need to develop their skills, wherever they are based.”

There are hundreds of learners now receiving training through the Progress project every week and these bursaries significantly increase delivery capacity in many regions. Voluntary sector staff and volunteers working with young people can access the training opportunities by visiting www.ncvys.org.uk/progress.html 

Press enquiries

For more information, please contact:
Ross Bailey, Communication and PR Officer, NCVYS
Tel: 020 7843 6471  
Email:  ross@ncvys.org.uk