With its attractive towns and villages, beautiful landscape and variety of attractions, the Cotswolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) has attracted visitors from across the UK and other parts of the world for decades.  This growth in visitor numbers has resulted in tourism becoming one of the largest and most important industries in the Cotswolds, generating over £400 million pounds into the local economy each year and supporting 11,500 jobs.

The Coalfields Regeneration Trust North Warwickshire, Bridging the Gap Funding Programme for requests of funding between £500 - £5,000.

Funding programme will run up to March 2011.

Who can apply
To be eligible, you must be a voluntary or community sector organisation and your project must show a clear benefit to a coalfield community.
Your organisation must hold a bank or building society account, have a constitution or set of rules, hold annual accounts and have an unrestricted income of less than £100,000 per annum.

Rugby Area Team and Warwickshire Police have produced an online survey, the results of which will be used to help them identify priorities in the local area and plan how they can work together to address these issues.

The results of the survey will be presented back to a future meeting of your local Community Forum. These meetings will also be used to monitor progress against the actions agreed and identify further work needed.

The Shared Energy Toolkit helps community organisations to raise awareness of climate change and plan for different possible future scenarios.

The toolkit includes easy to use exercises and original ideas for imagining different futures and planning for these. It also explores the links between climate change and the mission and vision of multi-purpose community organisations.

Come and join us at the following events to launch www.myfarminglife.org :

Tuesday 1 - June Horse and Jockey, Bentley 2-4pm

Wednesday 2 June - Fillongley Village Hall 11am-1.30 pm

Thursday 3 June - Tithe Barn, Polesworth 7.30-9pm
 
Saturday 5 June - Nether Whitacre Village Hall 2-4pm
 
Monday 7 June - The Café, Rugby Farmers Mart, Stoneleigh 10am-1pm

Tuesday 8 June - Horse and Jockey, Bentley 7.30-9.30pm

Monday 14 June - The Café, Rugby Farmers Mart, Stoneleigh 10am-12

Difficult people can be found in every workplace, whether it be in an office or volunteers in the local village hall. This leaflet, produced by Ladder 4 Learning, will give everyone some useful ideas for dealing with, and hopefully resolving, personnel issues.

If the natural environment is a concern for your organisation, this fund may be of interest.
A £2 million scheme to “unlock the economic potential of the West Midlands’ natural environment” will be open to applications for a little bit longer.
The next closing date for bids to the Natural Assets initiative had been scheduled for 21 May, but it has been extended until 8 September.

The Community Spaces open grants programme, which is managed by Groundwork UK and funded through the Big Lottery Fund, is making its final call to applicants.

Grant awards of between £10,000 - £49,999 are available from Community Spaces to transform or create green open spaces, however the programme will close to stage 1 applications on the 28 January 2011. 

Has your Community Building received a letter from British Gas defining your building as a non micro business?

Do you in fact qualify and want to change your definition? If so please email communitybuildings@wrccrural.org.uk for advice.

WRCC are very pleased to have won an award for their latest annual report, which was presented as part of the CWIC Quality & Governance Celebration Event at CentralVision on Wednesday 21st April.

Although up against some stiff competition it was felt that the report avoided the pitfall of merely being publicity material, instead providing information to partners, funders and users alike.