Examination of Witnesses (Questions 97
- 99)
MONDAY 8 DECEMBER 2003
JANET BIBBY,
STEPHEN JOHNSON,
GERALD OPPENHEIM
AND MARK
MCGANN
Q97 Chairman: Good afternoon. Thank
you for coming. Welcome to this session of the Committee. Can
we begin with introductions and start with Mr Oppenheim perhaps,
for the purposes of the record, please?
Mr Oppenheim: I am Gerald Oppenheim.
I am Director of Policy and Communications at the Community Fund.
Mr McGann: My name is Mark McGann,
Head of Policy and Public Affairs at the New Opportunities Fund.
I am standing in for my colleague Vanessa Potter, who is ill,
I am afraid.
Ms Bibby: I am Janet Bibby, Chief
Executive of the Coalfields Regeneration Trust.
Mr Johnson: I am Stephen Johnson,
Director of Operations at the Heritage Lottery Fund.
Q98 Chairman: Does anyone want to
make an opening statement, or are you happy to go straight into
the questions?
Mr Oppenheim: Straight in, I think.
Q99 Mr Cummings: I am sure you will
agree that the whole nation has heard such a lot about the huge
social and economic problems there are within the coalfields communities.
Can you tell the Committee what impact you will be able to make
in addressing them?
Mr Oppenheim: I think the impact
that we can make is to support organisations which are representative
of people who live in coalfield communities, whether those are
community organisations or more formally constituted as charities,
for example, and certainly for the Community Fund to respond to
the requests for funding that they put to us for things that will
improve life in the communities. I think that is our key role,
and to support applicants through a process of seeking grants,
which can be quite difficult, and help them through following
up on the grants later on.
Mr Johnson: I think we are doing
much the same. What we are trying to do, in concert with other
distributors, including the Coalfields Regeneration Trust, is
actually to help coalfields people make applications to us, come
to us with real proposals that will make a difference, from their
perspective, in what they want to do. We are not capacity-building
ourselves, in building that capacity, but we are capacity-building
through the joint action which we can undertake with others.
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