The involvement of a project which supported small groups to build the confidence and skills of unemployed adults from the most disadvantaged and excluded communities has been hailed a 'valuable and rewarding experience', according to the participating organisations.
Project Towpath, administered by GMCVO and funded by the Skills Funding Agency, provided grants of up to £12,000 to small voluntary sector groups based in Greater Manchester. The projects and groups supported used innovative solutions and methods to engage the hardest-to-reach people to make the positive steps needed to become 'job ready'.
Since the project’s launch in July 2008, 64 projects have received a total of £637,000. The final grants were awarded in March 2010.
The research into the project reported that the majority of organisations reported a clear and definite impact on the people they worked with, whether in terms of ‘soft’ outcomes (eg confidence and self-esteem) and skills (eg team-working) or more specific and practical competencies (eg computer literacy, language, writing).
Click on the attachment below for an executive summary of the report.
