Celtic Community Link

Closed

Celtic Community Link seeks to determine the best method for the Third Sector to provide services to rural areas so that volunteers, community champions or potential social entrepreneurs do not have to travel to urban areas. This will encourage a greater uptake of volunteerism and social enterprise activity in rural communities and improve their sustainability. The project will explore the feasibility of, and pilot, transient satellite centres in places such as rural village halls. To implement and deliver the system will require innovative methods with a flexible solution for all would be the ideal outcome. The project will help develop new community enterprises, promote better delivery of advice and services that are self-sustaining and help provide equal access and sustainability for rural areas. Project Aims: • Develop cross- border links to combat social exclusion in rural areas through outreach and technology hubs; • Facilitate direct exchange between community groups to share methods of approaching rural inclusion and service access; • Investigate a variety of communications scenarios and technologies to facilitate local, regional and cross border co-operation; • Promote the sharing of expertise of community group strengths and skills in both countries; • Investigate how a local facility for voluntary/community groups can stimulate innovative solutions to rural isolation as well as community cohesion and regeneration; • Jointly disseminate successful sustainability examples and promote their use in other areas through the development of a toolkit; • Encourage increased local volunteering in rural communities; • Investigate possibilities of collaborative centres; • Develop a sustainable and replicable exit strategy. Project Objectives: • Pilot a limited number of potential outreach centres and analysing their current situation. A draft toolkit will be developed from the pilot phase; • Initiate a larger roll-out of centres with the toolkit adapted to their situations; • Provide local access to help and information is essential to combat rural exclusion; • Training and mentoring will be provided with positive results from other areas adapted to local use; • Community group sustainability will be used to provide cross border advice. This will include advice from the eProcurement officers on local and possibly larger tendering opportunities. The officers will also champion the case for using community groups and social enterprises as service deliverers and for providing outreach centre resources for local authority and health as a sustainability strategy; • The final toolkit will not only contain technological solutions but also promote the advantages of collaborative working across borders and advice on sustainability.

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