WIREDGOV

Fixing it for young people across the UK is the Big Lottery Fund (BIG) which has today awarded £7,197,907 to Public Service Broadcasting Trust (PSBT) for Fixers.

BIG’s investment will enable PSBT to extend its award-winning Fixers social action campaign for young people across the UK and increase delivery in England.

Fixers is an award* winning social action campaign encouraging young people between the ages of 16 and 25 to change things for the better. Young people can choose and develop campaigns that will be useful to the community and help other people.

Over 5,000 young people in England have already been behind 600 Fixers projects and amassed over 100,000 hours of voluntary work between them. By scaling up across the UK, PSBT aims to involve around 21,000 new Fixers over a period of four years. So far young people have chosen a broad range of campaigns on problems they have often personally faced, including tackling negative stereotypes of minority groups including gender, race, sexuality and mental health issues.

PSBT provides practical support to help young people realise their vision and the issues that they wish to raise awareness and campaign on. Fixers create events, workshops, publications, films, adverts and posters, as a means of getting their message across.  They take their campaigns into schools, youth clubs, local authorities, community groups and service providers. PSBT also helps them to get their message to decision makers at all levels. In addition, a number of stories about Fixer campaigns will be broadcast by ITV regional news and made available to other TVoutlets such as the BBC and online channels, and national magazines. Fixers will be looking to replicate the success of individual young people who have already influenced policy and practice in England in a number of ways:

Peter Ainsworth, Big Lottery Fund UK Chair said: “BIG is extremely pleased to enable Fixers to engage with many more young people through its expansion across the UK. Fixers has already proven that it can make a difference to young people within their communities by creating innovative campaigns that address issues of their choosing whilst helping change negative stereotypes. As a result young people have become great community champions and communities are strengthened to overcome challenges through engaging in positive social action.”

Margo Horsley, Public Service Broadcasting Trust Chief Executive said: “Fixers offers young people the opportunity to address an issue they are passionate about, with the proviso that they make a difference to someone else. Some 5,000 young people have given their voice to the idea, but for each of them the idea belongs to them. I have been humbled by the effort and commitment that these young people have shown in making their contribution to society in their individual ways. On behalf of all the young people that we have worked with and those we have yet to meet, we thank the Big Lottery Fund for enabling us to reach young people all over the UK.”

* Two Fixers films won Royal Television Society awards in March 2011. The broadcast campaign won Best TV Coverage of Young People in Children and Young People Now magazine, positive images awards 2010. Individual Fixers have won multiple awards as a result of their project.

Further Information

Big Lottery Fund Press Office: 020 7211 1888
Out of hours media contact: 07867 500 572
Full details of the Big Lottery Fund programmes and grant awards are available on the website: www.biglotteryfund.org.uk
Ask BIG a question here: https://ask.biglotteryfund.org.uk
Follow BIG on Twitter: www.twitter.com/BigLotteryFund #BIGlf
Find BIG on facebook: www.facebook.com/BigLotteryFund

Notes to Editors

• The grant to Public Service Broadcasting Trust was made as part of Big Lottery Fund’s solicitation process.

http://www.biglotteryfund.org.uk/index/funding-uk/solicited_applications.htm

• Further information and case studies available at www.fixers.org.uk
• The Big Lottery Fund (BIG), the largest distributor of National Lottery good cause funding, is responsible for giving out 40% of the money raised for good causes by the National Lottery.
• BIG is committed to bringing real improvements to communities and the lives of people most in need and has been rolling out grants to health, education, environment and charitable causes across the UK. Since June 2004 BIG has awarded over £4.4bn.
• The Fund was formally established by Parliament on 1 December 2006.
• Since the National Lottery began in 1994, 28p from every pound spent by the public has gone to good causes. As a result, over £27 billion has now been raised and more than 370,000 grants awarded across arts, sport, heritage, charities, health, education and the environment.