A SERIES of events are taking place across the region to encourage community groups to bid for thousands of pounds in funding.

More than 100 community and voluntary groups have already benefited from more than £90,000 of grants from the County Council’s Stronger Communities team during the past 12-months.

Now the Stronger Communities team, which supports communities in playing a greater role in the delivery of services, is going on the road to encourage more groups to take advantage of this funding opportunity. Between September 7 and 14 the team’s ‘Get Inspired’ pop-up events will take place in libraries across the county.

These will mark the first anniversary of the team’s revised investment prospectus, which saw the start of a new way of supporting groups.

In that first year the Inspire fund, which offers grants of up to £1,000, has helped to fund events and activities, helped with start-up costs for new projects and with the purchase of equipment.

County Councillor David Chance, executive member for Stronger Communities, said: “Our Inspire fund has helped a great many people to do a lot of good during its first year.

“In total, £90,723 has been invested in 105 groups.

“This has benefited about 72,000 people and engaged 1,525 volunteers.

“More than half of the applications received were from new groups that had not worked with our Stronger Communities programme before, and a staggering 32,000 hours of volunteering have resulted from the first year of the Inspire projects.”

Get Inspired events will be taking place in the following community libraries; Boroughbridge on September 8, Ingleton on September 10, Richmond on September 11 and Thirsk on September 13. All sessions start at 10am.