Green Health Development Fund
The North Ayrshire Green Health Development Fund (GHDF) was established as a core feature of the Partnership as it was recognised that there was a substantial amount of green health activity already happening in local communities.
Sustainability of activity in the longer term was a key priority to the partnership as the Green Health Partnership was initially funded for 3 years, therefore it was recognised that the GHP could have greater impact if it worked with, and supported existing activities to develop and build capacity from the grass roots.
From the outset it was agreed funding each year would be delivered via a Green Health Development Fund (GHDF), to support new and existing groups and local delivery partners to increase capacity and engage with the partnership through a Green Health Network.
2018-2019 Fund
A number of options to deliver the GHDF were considered, with key partners. It was agreed it would be useful to deliver by locality as a way of engaging groups across NA and demonstrating our commitment and desire to work together. North Ayrshire has 6 Locality Planning Partnerships (LPP’s) geographically identical to the Health and Social Care Partnerships (HSCP) localities.
Participatory Budgeting events planned by North Ayrshire Council (NAC) to deliver small grants type funding to local people and community groups were a way of delivering via each locality at no cost to the NA GHP. This would allow an identified amount to be focused specifically on green health per locality and an opportunity to promote the NAGHP with local communities at scale. Total funding available was £30K and it was agreed each locality would receive £5K for green health based activities that met the requirements set out by the steering group and funding partners.
Participatory Budgeting (PB) is an inclusive way for local communities to decide how they want to spend public funds. By delivering the GHDF via PB the aim was to build a network of people/groups and activities, link services with these, increase capacity, co-ordinate activities, focus on the needs of local people allowing them to make the decisions about what should be funded and shape delivery around local health and community priorities.
The focus of PB is participation, something that resonates strongly with all green health activity; it’s about the relationships, conversations, networks with less emphasis on the money.
A total of 31 groups received funding of up to £1,000. Activities included a young person’s group building a mountain bike network of trail maintenance volunteers, community litter picks and beach cleans, horticultural therapy sessions, community growing and gardens, seashore explorer packs. The following infographic provides key statistics and facts following the first round of funding.
Final report can be accessed here on our Key Reports section.
2019-2021 Fund
As a result of COVID there were delays with the delivery of the funds for years 2&3 and there were no locality PB events to link in with. As a result and the knowledge that some groups would benefit from funding greater than £1,000 it was agreed that funding would be delivered as small grant funding. Total funding available was £60,000 and groups could apply for up to £1,000 (approx x20 groups), £5,000 (approx. x4 groups) and up to £10,000 (approx. x2 groups)
Evaluation of this is now underway and an infographic/report will be shared shortly.
