The Trailblazer VCSE Inclusion Health Programme is part of West Yorkshire’s Health and Growth Trailblazer initiative, designed to strengthen links between health, wellbeing, and employment through the voluntary, community, and social enterprise (VCSE) sector. The programme focuses on improving quality of life, reducing inequalities, and supporting residents who are not currently in paid work and face barriers connected to health, exclusion, or discrimination.
This funding recognises that for many people, paid employment may be several years away or may not be an option at all — yet improving wellbeing, skills, and community connections remains essential for reducing inequality in healthy life expectancy.
On Wednesday, 29th October, 29 organisations were invited to a Participatory Grant Making event for Trailblazer funding. Funding was allocated through a Participatory Grant Making process (PGM), which shifts power dynamics in grant making by asking communities to participate in the design, decision making, implementation and evaluation of grant making processes. Practically, this means communities, including VCSE organisations bidding for the funding, decide who receives investment, and this is often done through voting. The aim is to ensure that investment reaches those communities and organisations best placed to make a lasting difference.
PGM only works when there is a competitive process and as such, the strands brought forward to undertake a PGM process were Young People, Women’s Health, the Roma community, and South Asian Women. Organisations bidding in these strands created stalls for a marketplace to share information about their organisation and idea, and then they completed a 3 minute to pitch for their project. Attendees were required to rate the pitches (apart from their own) in three categories: clarity of idea, impact and relevance, and value for money. The projects that scored highest overall in their strand were automatically awarded funding.
After this, a giftback process was initiated, which gives organisations the option to re-evaluate whether they need the full award budget and giftback anything they think they can spare to fund initially unsuccessful bids. This is not expected or mandated but gives the funded organisations more choice on how to use the funding, like a commissioner, as part of the PGM process. The giftback pot currently stands at over £4,000 and organisations closest in votes to being funded will be invited back to have a conversation with the VCS Alliance to discuss how we can best allocate and utilise the additional funds.
Excluding the giftback, by the end of the event, 20 projects succeeded in securing £300,000+ of funding.
Congratulations to the first successful awardees:
SNOOP, All Stars LTD, Springfield Unlimited, West Bowling Community and Advice and Training Centre, Bradford Community Broadcasting, Safety First Community Training Centre, European Drom, Good Shepard’s Centre, 313 Foundation, Happy Healthy You, Meridian Centre, Girlington Centre, HALE, Keighley Healthy Living, Step 2 Young People, Womenzone, West Bowling Youth Initiative, Yorkshire Women’s Forum and North East Windhill Community.
One of the awardees, Springfield Unlimited, had this to share about the event:
“…The team did a wonderful job of making us feel included and ensuring that the event was genuinely participatory.
It was also so refreshing to see how transparent you all were about each decision you made and the reasoning behind it, I think you did an incredible job of representing the best qualities of the voluntary sector in Bradford.”
Yorkshire Women’s Forum also shared with us:
“We’ve been reflecting on the experience and it really stood out to us how efficient & engaging the participatory format was. It was refreshing to see a process that felt so open, collaborative, community-driven and we genuinely enjoyed being part of it.
We’re already starting to get ready to begin delivery and are excited about the impact this project will have alongside some of the other work we already have lined up.”
Yasmin Khan, Relationship Manager, is working closely with all other inclusion group submissions to ensure a comprehensive delivery framework and that a due diligence process is undertaken. The strands of funding that are being directly awarded are: Poorer White Groups, LGBTQ+ Communities, Black Communities, Learning Disability/Neurodiversity/Autism, and Bangladeshi Communities.
The organisations directly funded by Trailblazer are:
United Arts Project CIC, Bradford LGBTQ+ Strategic Partnership, MESMAC, Bangladeshi Youth Organisation, Restore Recovery College, Denholme Community Centre, Black Health Forum, SNOOP, Rohingya Association UK, and BEAP Community Partnership, Bradford New Church.
We are committed to ensuring an equitable voice for all the groups listed, and as a result £15,000 was also ringfenced to carry out wider engagement within Trailblazer.
The Trailblazer programme has given the VCSE sector the opportunity to deliver and engage geographically and thematically, and the full programme will see over 50 VCSE organisations working together to support individuals furthest away from the labour market. All Trailblazer partners will come together in March to engage in a participatory evaluation of the programme.
Trailblazer is part of the Healthy Working Life West Yorkshire programme, and is funded by UK government, Bradford Council, and West Yorkshire Combined Authority.
