Ards Peninsula Councillor Joe Boyle has welcomed the recent awarding of grants totalling £55k to 20 organisations throughout the borough involving schools and community groups.
He said: “One of the applications I was involved with, I worked with St. Mary’s Primary School in Kircubbin and the Principal Mr Seamus Dorrian, his staff and Council Officials which resulted in receiving the maximum £5000 grant for an Outdoor Environmental Hub. Play is viewed to be crucial to many aspects of a child’s development. Playgrounds around the world have been developed using recycled materials and this was a concept that St. Mary’s Kircubbin wanted to bring to their local community.
“As the first Chairperson within the Ards and North Down Council of the Environment Committee we were tasked to implement a recycling strategy in order to increase our recycling targets, therefore, assisting with managing our rate increases to our rate-payers on one hand and also avoiding the distinct possibility of significant European fines for failing to reach these targets.
“Within this thinking, I also believed that we should create a fund for thanking our rate-payers for their efforts and in line with the implementation of our food waste recycling programme a fund was established entitled the ” Recycling Community Investment Fund‘.
Councillor Boyle added: “The Council had previously added its support to the regional campaign Live Here Love Here, co-ordinated by Keep Northern Ireland Beautiful, which also involved a small grants scheme whereby local groups could apply for funding in order to implement projects within their community relating to both an environmental aspect and also promoting civic pride. This year due to the Council agreed Recycling Community Invest Fund the level of funding for the small grants scheme was significantly enhanced raising the value of the fund from £12,500 to almost £60,000.
“I would place on record my appreciation to our Council staff for their efforts in working with the groups in the borough and in bringing their applications to fruition within the criteria in place. There has been a range of environmental projects that have been funded to enhance and create projects within communities that build civic pride, community ownership, community identity and spirit.
“Each grant recipient will be provided with a plaque highlighting that the scheme has been made possible as a result of money saved through our rate-payers recycling efforts and these plaques will be displayed at each site concerned. In this way it is hoped that the community will be further incentivised to perpetuate our recycling progress into the future.”
