Stephen McPartland MP opened a Lottery Funding event at Knebworth Village Hall to help small community groups and charities learn more about accessing funds for their projects.
Stephen said, "I have been working with the Big Lottery Fund for six months to pull this event together, as I was really keen to get the whole Lottery family into one room. I was delighted we were able to persuade representatives from the Big Lottery Fund, Arts Council, Heritage Lottery Fund and Sport England to come together at Knebworth Village Hall.
"My idea was to put together the smaller local charity and community groups, who traditionally find it difficult to access lottery funding, with the people who make the decisions. There were over 80 groups present at the event and the message from the whole lottery family was a very loud and clear, we are here to help.
"Pretty much every group is going away to work on an application and I look forward to seeing lots of successful projects over the coming months. We have been very lucky in obtaining lottery funding as an area but it normally goes into a small number of very large projects that often have no real positive impact on the wider community. I would like to see lots of smaller charity and community groups successfully bid for small amounts of funding that we know from experience will make a massive impact on the wider community."
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