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Acting for Social Inclusion - Birmingham CAN!

Acting for Social Inclusion - Birmingham CAN! is one of a few Voluntary Sector - led SRB programmes in England. Supported by the Government Office of West Midlands, a partnership led by BVSC successfully bid for £4.25m of Single Regeneration Budget Round 4 money in 1998 and formally launched the programme on 21st June 1999. SRB4 is entering Year 7 of its seven-year time-span

The Partnership Steering Group advising and guiding this program has a majority voluntary sector membership made up of 19 organisations from across Birmingham.

The aim of this programme is to target the inclusion of Birmingham's most disadvantaged communities through the development of a stronger, more effective and dynamic voluntary sector.

Too often regeneration work has concentrated on buildings and businesses rather than people and communities. Acting for Social Inclusion Birmingham CAN! is about working with Birmingham's community and voluntary sector to develop, partnerships, strategies, skills and other capacity linked activities which will assist these organisations and the communities they serve to have a role in the future regeneration of Birmingham.

Since the programme's launch (June 1999) the Partnership have supported a variety of activities - from training sessions and seminars to developing a Community IT Net involving 17 local organisations. 18 groups have been successful in receiving funding for up to three years to capacity build their organisation or the individuals they work with. The Partnership hope to enable more groups to participate in the regeneration process through co-ordinating the SRB6 Conference for Local Community and Voluntary Organisations which was attended by over 170 groups. This is just an example of some of the work supported by this programme.