Durham County Council’s ‘Fun and Food’ Programme provides FREE holiday activities with healthy food and meals for children and young people in County Durham. Activities are provided by schools, voluntary and community sector groups, sport and leisure services, our Family Centres and other partners including Shotton Community Hub.

We have been very fortunate to secure funding from The Co-op Local Community Fund which supports projects across the UK that co-op members care about.  In the 2022/2023 period funding from the co-op allowed us to tidy up and clean our outside areas and helped fund our youth provision.

As a member of EDCT, the Partnership has been able to work with the Trust on many different projects including the Connect project and the Let’s Create project. 

The Partnership support the community in emergencies, especially the cost of living crisis.

The support included:

• Delivering free meals to vulnerable people in the village (funded by CDCF)
• Distributing food parcels from East Durham Community Trust
• Delivering Christmas hampers
• Setting up a table with donated food for people to help themselves
• Litter picks around the village
• The Partnership’s ‘Our Place’ Environment Group maintaining the planters around the village

• The Hub has always provided a warm place for people to come, however, in 2022-23  we provided a designated warm space for members of the community who were feeling the pinch because of the cost of living crisis. (Funded by CDCF and EDT)

The annual Festival is always very well received by the village with over 500 people attending throughout the day in 2022. Attractions include a fairground; children’s entertainer; disco; party games; animal zoo; arts & craft and musical entertainment.

The cost of the event in 2022 was covered by the Parish Council; Co-op Good Causes; local businesses and raffles and tombola on the day.

Funding from Ballinger Charitable Trust is enabling us to recruit a new team member who will be enrolled on a 3-year degree apprenticeship course in “Community and Youth Work” at the University of Sunderland.  This will see our youth provision expand enabling us to work with even more young people. 

The Department of Media, Culture and Sport have initiated the Youth Investment Fund which will transform the government’s offer for young people and level up opportunities right across the country.  The YIF is to enable local youth providers to invest in capital projects that expand the reach, number and range of services they currently offer including capital funding for new builds.

The Partnership put in an expression of interest which led to us being invited to apply for a pre-capital grant.  The application was successful and we received funding towards the cost of getting the project to RIBA Stage 4 Design.  Our project is to demolish the log cabin at the Community Park and replace it with a youth facility.