Offploy is proud to announce that it has won CLLD (Community Led Local Development) funding to help place people with criminal convictions into meaningful employment in order to reduce reoffending. Offploy’s goal is to use the funding to support 100 people from the 20% most deprived areas in Hull into employment.
Community Led Local Development (CLLD) is an EU project funded by European Structural and Investment Funds. It is a tool for involving citizens at local level to develop responses to the social, environmental and economical challenges often faced today, particularly in deprived, urban areas. The programme has been designed to help people find work, build work-related skills, offer support to increase household incomes and support local businesses. A Local Action Group Board, comprised of members of the public sector plus voluntary, community and social enterprise sectors, businesses and residents, oversees the project.
Offploy is a social enterprise set up in 2016 which recruits staff, typically without convictions, for the criminal justice sector then reinvests 100% of the profits into helping those with criminal convictions find meaningful, mentored and sustainable employment. The new initiative received over 10m views across the world on LinkedIn after addressing such a difficult issue felt globally.
Jacob Hill, Offploy’s Managing Director, said: “Winning the Hull Community Led Local Development was a pivoting point for Offploy Community Interest Company - seeing our team of 6 grow to a team of 14 within two months. This has not only generated more jobs and work experience opportunities in Offploy for ex-offenders, university students and budding probation officers, it has also increased our service to our candidates ensuring we have more time to train, mentor and support them into employment. We know employment reduces reoffending and thanks to this contract we are able to help more people lead contributing lives and make society safer.”
The funds have already helped a number of people along their path to employment. ‘Candidate Y’ who took part in the Offploy/ Interserve pilot has found this intervention to be ‘highly motivating’ and is ‘thrilled to be getting the opportunity to do both training and employment’. The case manager for Candidate Y suggested that working with Offploy has opened up job paths that Candidate Y had not even thought of.
Clive Darnell, Chair of the Local Action Group Board said “CLLD aims to support those people who face significant barriers to accessing employment, skills and training, and the Offploy project will give people who have offended in the past a real opportunity to get their lives back on track.”
The Hull CLLD programme overall is receiving up to £5 million funding from the England European Structural and Investment Funds Growth Programme 2014-2020. The Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government and the Department for Work and Pensions are the managing authorities for ERDF and ESF funding through the Growth Programme, funds established by the European Union to help local areas stimulate their economic development. By investing in projects the funds will help to support innovation, businesses, skills and employment to improve local growth and create jobs. For more information, visit https://www.gov.uk/european-growth-funding
Find more details on the CLLD grant programme, at www.hlc-vol.org/clld.
Tags #CLLD #Hull #Interserve