Our Building Local Activism programme, funded by Big Lottery Fund, is supporting communities to develop their capability to instigate and sustain local activism - in order to gain power and influence over the decisions that affect them.

Working in various areas across England, we are supporting individuals to come together and create lasting improvements in their communities by pressurising institutions, businesses and governments to act.

This is done through two strands of work; scaling proven models of community organising, and digital activism. We are supporting three ‘early stage' social ventures that work through a community organising model for a two year period to scale their delivery models in new areas across England.

Definitions

We define community organising as the process of supporting individuals to come together to improve their communities by putting pressure on institutions, businesses and governments to act. Community organisers work to identify local leaders, bring together local groups and develop campaigns about local issues. We define early stage not by how old the organisation is but how close it is to a robust, sustainable, and scalable business model.

Aims

The Young Foundation has partnered with with Church Action on Poverty, Citizens UK and the Novas Scarman Group, in order to help build the field of community organising in the UK. Over two years, theYoung Foundation will provide each organisation with intensive business support to help them scale their approach to community organising to new areas of the country

Through our digital activism strand, we are supporting people to campaign and lobby for change through popular social media platforms and, where appropriate, newly developed digital tools. We will partner with six community groups on this strand and have chosen the following four to work with initially: Hackney Citizens Advice Bureau, Holloway Neighbourhood Group, Leeds Older People’s Forum, and Women’s Networking Hub, Birmingham.

We are looking for a further two communities to work with us on Digital Activism, so please get in touch if you are interested.