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Please vote for our Self-Reliant Groups project to receive an Aviva Community award!

aviva-community-fund-iconChurch Action on Poverty is helping women in disadvantaged neighbourhoods to build livelihoods by setting up Self-Reliant Groups – and the project is up for an award from the Aviva Community Fund. You can vote for us to get support and make a difference to more people!

Click here to learn about Self-Reliant Groups and place your vote.

If we get this grant, women in Greater Manchester will lift themselves out of poverty by forming five new Self-Reliant Groups (SRGs). They will create micro-savings and microbusinesses, gain valuable skills, and lift themselves out of poverty.
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SRG members support each other, meet regularly, and save money together in small amounts like £1 a week. They share skills, learn together, and use their savings to set up micro-enterprises or support one another with loans. Once established, each SRG will gain access to a ‘hub’ of expertise and resources, and become part of a peer mentoring network alongside SRGs in other parts of the UK.
We will work in deprived areas of Greater Manchester. From our work alongside local people, we know that many lack self-confidence, feel isolated, and see little hope of improving their life chances or finding a place in society.
Self-Reliant Groups will be made up of local women, who are often at the heart of families, and can be very resourceful, juggling small budgets, and drawing on social networks to get by. But incomes are decreasing, and a lack of decent flexible work is a major barrier for people who have caring responsibilities.
 
We will recruit five groups of up to 10 women in Greater Manchester, which will each be trained and supported for six months to form an SRG.
SRG members will attend intensive training events, and we will also hold a public event that informs inspires 70-80 more local women about the SRG way of working.
The women who are part of the project will gain:

  • increased creativity;
  • new skills including: practical crafts; financial and business management; marketing and communications;
  • an increased sense of wellbeing
  • greater control over their own resources, and increased financial security;
  • greater confidence.

The economic activity and enthusiasm generated in local communities will build resilience and support cooperation more widely.
Click here to vote for us now!