Shetland south decides
A joint community council PB Project covering the South Mainland of Shetland, to distribute £30,000, undertaken in November 2018.
Gulberwick, Quarff & Cunningsburgh Community Council, Sandwick Community Council and Dunrossness Community Council jointly submitted an application to the Scottish Government Community Choices Fund and were successful in securing £30,000 to be distributed via a participatory budgeting process. Shetland Islands Council supported the group throughout the project.
The criteria for eligibility for funding was based on the Shetland Partnership Plan Priorities of Place, People Participation and Money. The project looked to improve the quality of life, particularly for vulnerable people within communities, and support participation and inclusion, as well as enhancing Shetland as a place to live and work. Projects should have contribute to at least one of the priorities of the Shetland Partnership Plan, and have a particular focus on the Shetland South area.
Applications were invited from local and Shetland wide groups. They had to demonstrate that their project would help improve the lives of people in the south of Shetland, linking in with the Shetland Partnership Plan. If the project met the grant criteria then it went through to the public vote.
Feedback from 2016 showed that scoring each project out of five was time-consuming and confusing for some voters, so this time each voter was simply given three tokens which they could choose to put in the bucket representing their three favourite projects.
Twenty two applications were received and went through to the public vote at a market place style event. Voting was done via tokens with each project working hard at their stall to convince members of the public to give them one of their three votes. At the end of the event, the votes were counted and those with the most points got the money they needed. Almost five hundred people came along to the Cunningsburgh Hall on Saturday 17th November.
Three projects were successful in securing all of part of their funding. Decisions on where community money goes is usually decided by an organisation but this style of grant funding – called participatory budgeting – is about giving power to the people and letting the community decide which projects should receive the funds.
Kerry Geddes, clerk at Gulberwick, Quarff and Cunningsburgh Community Council said it was great to see the South Mainland community working together so well: “I’m really pleased that so many people took part and that the groups could see that the benefits of this type of funding event is about far more than the money.”
Raymond Mainland, Dunrossness Community Councillor said the participatory budgeting model worked well: “It was great that the community got so involved. The groups all put a lot of work in to their bids and they had obviously done a lot of lobbying as there was people of all ages and from all parts of the community there. Feedback from the groups themselves was also very positive with everyone enjoying the chance to network, share details of their groups and projects and hopefully pick up more volunteers and members.”