Community groups in the driving seat
Posted on Monday, February 1st, 2010
The Colebridge Trust and Solihull SUSTAiN will soon have a new facility that puts Solihull’s voluntary & community groups in the driving seat, after being awarded approximately £29,500 from Capacitybuilders for a new community bus.
The new bus will provide a mobile exhibition space to help groups promote their services, recruit volunteers, raise funds and much more.
Charles Rapson, Enterprise Manager for Colebridge Trust & SUSTAiN says: “We already have interest from several organisations in the town who enjoyed the facility our previous bus provided. We have also had interest from Council and Care Trust departments who see the bus as a very cost effective way of getting information out to communities and encouraging people to get involved in the way the town is run. The beauty of a mobile space is that it can help groups in every part of this large borough”.
Charles hopes to have a bus on the road in early spring.
“The funds couldn’t come at a better time as the former bus has finally gone to the great car park in the sky after serving the community very well for over 20 years – first as a mobile library and then as a community facility”.
Dave Pinwell, SUSTAiN’s CEO
Funding comes as part of a pot of money earmarked by the government to improve facilities and resources the community could benefit from. Capacitybuilders, who manages the Capital Investment Programme on behalf of the Cabinet Office of the Third Sector, were impressed by the novel way SUSTAiN and Colebridge Trust approached this problem in Solihull.
