Pembrokeshire Community Assets Fund
A cloud based platform to allow Pembrokeshire communities to raise funds for maintaining local assets and facilities has been awarded funding by Arwain Sir Benfro.
Arwain Sir Benfro – the Local Action Group (LAG) for Pembrokeshire, administered by PLANED has provided funding of £28,759 to Sustainable Community Facilities and Assets Fund for their pilot Community Assets Fund Project. This is funded through the LEADER programme, which is part of the Welsh Government Rural Communities – Rural Development Programme 2014 – 2020, Funded by the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development and the Welsh Government.
Arwain Sir Benfro Project Officer, Buddig Meredith said: “The project aims to develop an on-line cloud based platform to allow Pembrokeshire communities to easily raise funds for maintaining local assets and facilities such as playing fields, play equipment, village halls, notice boards and so on. The concept of the fund is that individuals pay a £1 a week and then sees 50p of the £1 used for supporting community assets and facilities. The remaining 50p is split between regular prizes and running costs of the fund, but a centre fund will also evolve for specific non locational projects. With the need to safeguard local services and support the maintenance of local assets there is now a clear opportunity to ask local people to support in the maintaining and development of local assets and facilities.”
A new online platform will handle direct debits and a local community database of members. Members will also be encouraged to volunteer to support the community assets and facilities.
The project will pilot an online Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system that will allow each individual community group to use direct debit and credit card facilities to draw in a £1 a week from locals to be members of the fund. There will be regular prizes and 50p in every pound will come back to the community that the member lives in. This project idea has been developed from volunteers who have been running such a fund for the past 10 years. Having an online platform will allow this initiative to be replicated across Pembrokeshire.
Arwain Sir Benfro is currently supporting project ideas from local community groups, organisations and businesses. As the Local Action Group for Pembrokeshire, we bring together a mix of local community representatives, business, third sector, local authority partners.”
LEADER is supporting all kinds of activity: mentoring, training, feasibility studies or pilot projects that test an innovative new idea. It can also be used for projects that improve local skills, make better use of a local resource or realise the economic potential of part of the locality leading to a ‘new’ outcome or product.