Save Community Champions

The Community Champions Fund has supported literally thousands of individuals across the country to get exciting and creative new projects off the ground in their communities. The fund will end in March 2008, and there are no plans to replace it. The Scarman Trust is campaigning to save this unique programme.

All the Community Champions have done extraordinary things, building positive community activities from the grass-roots and reaching literally thousands of people. My friend Mandy Fenn became a national Community Champion because of the funding that she received through the scheme which enabled her to begin self-help groups for people who were self harming. Mandy's work was featured as a Case Study in the Scarman Trust report Learning Power:

"Mandy Fenn started harming herself from the age of eight until 29. With support from the Scarman Trust, she set up three Cutting out the Pain groups in Barking & Dagenham to help other selfharmers. She produced leaflets, materials and ran groups to raise awareness. She didn’t realise how big the issue was until people started contacting her from across the borough and the UK. “Getting support from health services was difficult at first, because people didn’t want to know. Self-harm is a scary and confusing. But now they understand and are helping.” Mandy is doing a survey of self-harm with the hospital and setting up an anonymous help-line. She has shown a great deal of courage by speaking up and show people her badly scarred arms to raise awareness. By taking a stand Mandy is giving hope and help to many others, reaching through the hurt to start the healing."

Please sign the petition to Save Community Champions (on the Number 10 website) - and encourage as many others as possible to do so. Click here to sign the petition which reads: 'We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to ensure Community Champions awards continue to give active individuals the opportunity to do extraordinary things and make a real difference in their communities.' Support the campaign further by writing to your MP.