A project that creates job opportunities, builds ambition, pride and skills, celebrates local identity and develops Gwynedd's community resilience
Overview
If there are challenges facing your community, it is possible that Menter Môn’s programme – Grymuso Gwynedd – is helping to solve them.
Grymuso Gwynedd creates job opportunities, fosters ambition, pride and skills, celebrates local identity and develops the county’s community resilience.
By the time the programme ends in December 2024, it will have helped over thirty communities to address a local challenge.
Leaders of the future
In partnership with Cymunedoli Cyf, the team’s role is to use their expertise and experiences in areas such as the environment, entrepreneurship, technology, business, food and language to respond to challenges and offer solutions to communities across Gwynedd.
Not only are these professional leaders able to assist people in the communities with developing their projects and offering advice, but there is also an opportunity to share the learning and pass on leadership and skills locally, through a series of training sessions.
Taking action through the Grymuso Gwynedd Empowerment
Grymuso Gwynedd helps communities solve challenges by offering financial and practical support to develop local projects. The ideas come from the communities themselves, as it is those initiatives and organisations that know best which challenges are to be tackled.
The range of projects that receive support from the fund is extremely diverse. Some are setting out to celebrate history in a new way, such as producing a live show to celebrate a century of Cricieth Memorial Hall, mapping the Nantlle Valley, or holding creative sessions to create new sea shanties in Nefyn.
Others use the funding to help people in need, from running a social prescription service to developing mentors and coaches who can help individuals living with addiction.
A number of buildings take advantage of the fund – some village halls carry out a study to find out the building’s development potential to modernise, and others use the funding to develop a shop or community pub, or renovate a chapel or an old a school to become a new hub for the community.
There is a strong sense of sharing and innovation. For example, the purpose of the Llanaelhaearn Housing Project is to develop an alternative model of home ownership for local people, and a new methodology that includes the ability to speak Welsh in the tenancy process. Finding a way to become a self-sustaining enterprise is the goal for Porthi Dre, which uses the funding from improving kitchen facilities. And owning a visitor centre is the vision in Coed-y-brenin.
If successful, these hyperlocal projects could become an inspiration to the rest of the county and beyond, showing what is possible when desire and local ownership is combined with professional support.
This programme by Menter Môn has been funded by the UK Government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, with financial support also from Nuclear Restoration Services (NRS) on behalf of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA).
