Rural Programme Community Development Support

What's it all about?

Through the Rural Programme we invested £13.5 million to create solutions to address rural poverty in Wales.

Our aims were to make great things happen in rural communities in Anglesey, Gwynedd, Conwy, Denbighshire, Powys, Ceredigion, Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire and Monmouthshire.

The first stage of the Rural Programme was Community Development Support. Approximately £2 million was set aside for community development support grants, which were up to seven years in length. This was because our research and consultation identified how rural communities sometimes lack the capacity to identify assets that will make improvements.

Up to four grants were available to empower rural communities to develop their own ideas to overcome challenges they face which are linked to poverty. Funding was available to third sector-led partnerships to support communities which had a population of under 10,000 within the nine local authority areas.

We were looking for potential applicants to work in partnership to achieve the following:

• rural communities are brought together to work in partnership and map the strengths and challenges within their community
• rural communities are empowered to develop their own solutions to address poverty
• approaches to community development are evaluated and disseminated to inform future work in rural areas.

Successful applicants were also able to award micro grants of up to £750 to rural communities. There was a broad remit as to what they can be used for, as long as they have an underlying aim of addressing rural poverty in their communities, and can be considered value for money.