Community Fund projects 2026/27

Step Up 2

North Yorkshire Sport £30,000.00 (MAS) – Countywide

This funding will add value by enabling Step Up 2 to build on the strengths of both the Stepping Up and Achieve projects, continuing to support seldom-reached young people in the most deprived communities. It will expand the reach and depth of early intervention, increasing mentoring, structured activities, and engagement opportunities. The project places a stronger focus on supporting young people within their local communities, fostering partnerships and creating opportunities for them to embed positively with peers and wider networks. Funding will also enhance evaluation, ensuring interventions remain evidence-led, impactful, and sustainable.

Through a structured blend of one-to-one and group mentoring, the programme proactively diverts young people away from pathways that can lead to offending, delivered through a trauma-informed approach with particular emphasis on the transition from primary to secondary school. Targeting young people aged 7–14, the programme raises aspirations, builds resilience, and develops essential life skills. A core element is strengthening relationships between young people and the police. Through mentoring, sport, and physical activity, participants engage in structured support sessions designed to develop soft skills, social literacy, and positive relationships. Sessions run for a half term, using schools as a safe and familiar environment, and culminate in a community-based session alongside peers to reinforce positive social connection.

From Mentoring to Ambassadors: A Prevention and Engagement Programme Using Mindful Photography

Mindful Photography UK CIC £15,000.00 (CF) – Countywide

This project delivers a targeted mentoring programme using mindful and therapeutic photography to support individuals experiencing vulnerability, isolation, or barriers to engagement. The programme is designed for those who may not yet be ready for employment or formal interventions, including survivors of domestic abuse, neurodivergent individuals, and those with experience of the justice system.

This is a preventative, engagement-led model that strengthens protective factors, reduces isolation, and supports long-term positive outcomes aligned with community safety. Participants are referred through established partnerships, ensuring appropriate support, safeguarding, and suitability for the programme. Through small group sessions and 1:1 mentoring, participants build confidence, self-efficacy, and connection. A key feature is progression into Peer Ambassador roles, enabling participants to support others and contribute positively to their communities.

A Clean Slate

Clean Slate Solutions £28,000.00 (CF) – Countywide

This project focuses on supporting the existing community mentor based in York, covering York and the wider North Yorkshire area. Funding will enhance impact by expanding the mentor’s capacity to reach more people with past convictions, providing resources to strengthen tailored mentoring, employment support, and partnerships with local employers, ensuring beneficiaries receive comprehensive assistance to reintegrate into society.

The role is currently funded at 50% of time in the region. This funding will allow 100% of mentor time, also covering the northern part of North Yorkshire where demand from both employers and beneficiaries is at an all-time high. The community mentor works closely with beneficiaries often up to 12 weeks before prison release, through the gate, and with those already in the community. Support often continues 3–6 months once employed. Through tailored training programmes, participants gain practical knowledge and competencies including NVQs in hospitality, HGV licences, CSCS construction cards, and specialised courses. Employment remains the single most important factor in preventing reoffending.

Killinghall Safe Sport Pavilion Project

Killinghall Cricket Club £28,500.00 (MAS) – Harrogate

Funding is for a specific safer access, inclusive changing and supervised community use package within the wider pavilion redevelopment. This includes upstairs team changing room fit-out with privacy and safeguarding measures, fit-out of the umpire and female changing room, an accessible WC and shower, entrance and circulation improvements, and equipment and delivery costs linked to structured junior and family activity.

The existing changing rooms have large windows, making them uncomfortable and inappropriate for children changing for sport. The current layout also restricts the ability to strengthen the junior pathway, grow girls’ and women’s cricket, and provide the accessibility and flexibility needed for disabled users and mixed participation scenarios. There have previously been issues with young people congregating around the ground, including anti-social behaviour. The club has worked hard to create a more inclusive, positive and supervised environment, and this project will build on that progress by strengthening the site as a safe, welcoming and well-used community recreation space.

The Reawakening Abstinence Based Recovery House and Peer Support Programme

Reawakening North Yorkshire CIC £10,000.00 (CF) – Harrogate

Reawakening North Yorkshire CIC provides abstinence-based supported housing and trauma-aware peer support for people in early recovery from addiction. This new project fills a clear and urgent gap in Harrogate and North Yorkshire for abstinence-based supported housing combined with structured, trauma-aware peer support. At present, individuals leaving detox, rehab, prison, or homelessness services often return to unstable or unsafe environments without access to abstinent, recovery-focused accommodation, increasing vulnerability, crisis presentations, exploitation risk, and the likelihood of reoffending.

The programme provides safe, stable, abstinent accommodation alongside a structured, lived-experience-led programme that builds recovery capital, resilience, and community connection. Over 12 months, the project will deliver weekly lived experience groups, recovery capital development, guest speakers, community engagement activities, and one-to-one support. The programme strengthens protective factors known to reduce reoffending: routine, positive relationships, accountability, community connection, and access to consistent support.

Active Future Half Term Youth Clubs

Leeds Futsal Partnership Ltd t/a Active Future East Leeds and Wakefield £5,600.00 (MAS) – Selby

The project currently delivers a FEAST-funded programme providing sport and movement opportunities for eligible young people. A clear gap has been identified in provision for those who fall outside FEAST eligibility, with approximately 20–30 non-eligible young people attending sessions each week. These young people are often those demonstrating anti-social behaviour in the surrounding areas.

This funding will formally extend provision to include these young people, removing financial barriers and creating a fully inclusive, universal offer. This will reduce the stigma associated with eligibility-based programmes and ensure all young people in Selby and Brayton can access the same opportunities regardless of background or circumstance. The project aims to deliver preventative, community-based provision that supports safer neighbourhoods while improving physical and mental wellbeing for young people most at risk of disengagement.

The Groves Community Action Project

The Groves Association £9,606.00 (CF) – York

The Groves Community Action Project aims to address persistent antisocial behaviour by improving the local environment and bringing together residents, partners and local services to create a safer, more welcoming neighbourhood. Following an Environmental Visual Audit undertaken by the MPlan Designing Out Crime Officer, clear recommendations were identified to reduce opportunities for ASB through positive changes to the physical environment.

Working in partnership with local businesses, Guildhall councillors, City of York Council and North Yorkshire Police, the project focuses on prevention, community engagement and improving perceptions of safety. Funding will support targeted environmental improvements in identified ASB hotspot areas, including installing low fencing to prevent drug users from congregating on existing low walls. Funding will also support positive engagement activities through Youth Justice Services and Community Payback schemes, with participants working with a professional artist to create new murals on communal walls, transforming neglected spaces into attractive community assets.

The Move Project

Dance Space Projects CIC / York Dance Space £17,400.00 (MAS) – York

This is a new project designed to address a gap in targeted provision for young male-identifying people in the Tang Hall area of York. While general youth services exist, there is limited provision that specifically engages young men through creative, movement-based approaches to explore masculinity, identity, and behaviour in a safe and structured way.

The project responds to a need for early intervention and diversionary activity that combines physical movement, creative expression, and facilitated discussion. It will deliver a 12-month programme of weekly movement, dance, and film workshops for young male-identifying people aged 11–15 in Tang Hall. Sessions will combine physical activity with creative exploration, providing a safe space for participants to express themselves while exploring themes of masculinity, identity, respect, and behaviour. The project aims to prevent involvement in anti-social behaviour and reduce risk of offending, supporting approximately 15–25 targeted young people with consistent weekly engagement.

YTT Safe Futures Youth Project

York Travellers Trust £17,345.00 (CF) – York

This is a new project developed in response to concerns raised by Gypsy and Traveller families about increasing challenges facing young people, including lack of safe spaces, exposure to risk, and limited access to trusted support. While some youth provision exists locally, there is a clear gap in culturally appropriate, consistent, and relationship-based engagement for Gypsy and Traveller young people, many of whom do not access mainstream services due to mistrust, discrimination, or feeling unsafe.

York Travellers Trust will deliver a targeted youth programme supporting Gypsy and Traveller young people aged 11–18 who are at risk of disengagement, isolation, or involvement in anti-social behaviour. The project will offer a weekly youth club alongside structured activities including dance sessions, self-defence training, and life skills sessions focused on managing conflict, emotional wellbeing, and navigating difficult circumstances. These activities are designed not just as engagement, but as preventative interventions that support young people to make safer choices and reduce vulnerability.

Rowntree Park Skate Park: Safer, More Inclusive Space Project

The Friends of Rowntree Park £8,500.00 (MAS) – York

This project builds on the established Make Space York initiative, which since 2021 has engaged over 400 teenage girls in shaping safer, more inclusive park spaces. This funding will enable targeted physical improvements to the skate park area within Rowntree Park, identified as a location where anti-social behaviour and intimidation can occur, affecting a wide range of park users.

The project addresses a clear gap between community insight and environmental change. It will apply learning from engagement – including evidence from girls who feel unable to access or pass through the space – to redesign the area by improving visibility, reducing enclosed areas and introducing welcoming social seating that encourages wider, more positive use. Working in partnership with the City of York Council, this project will benefit young people aged 10 to 18 alongside wider park users including families with small children, directly informed by extensive engagement demonstrating barriers to use linked to fear of harassment and exclusion.

Personal Safety and Prevention Programme for Women and Girls

Power For Women Limited £10,000.00 (MAS) – York

Power For Women is a self-defence and personal safety organisation that equips women and girls with the skills, awareness and confidence to reduce their risk of harm. This project builds on existing delivery that has already provided self-defence and personal safety training across schools, universities and community settings in York, alongside partnerships with North Yorkshire Police and Youth Justice services.

This funding will enable the project to expand and strengthen by increasing the number of sessions delivered, reaching a wider range of participants including those in priority or underserved areas, and developing more structured pathways for engagement. Delivery will combine targeted workshops in education settings, community-based sessions, and engagement with groups identified through existing local partnerships. Alongside in-person delivery, the project will provide access to online learning resources and educational materials to reinforce learning and enable participants to continue developing their knowledge and confidence beyond the sessions.capacity.