Fresh Start Innovation Fund
Applications are now open for the first round of the Fresh Start Innovation Fund, aimed at supporting local solutions to address youth offending.
As well as targeting serious and persistent young offenders, Fresh Start also includes a number of initiatives aimed at helping children and young people at the lower end of offending, or at risk of getting into trouble. One of these initiatives is the Innovation Fund, available to grass roots organisations to provide local solutions to reduce youth offending.
The Innovation Fund will be distributed through a system of grants to allow maximum flexibility, and the first funding round opened on 1 March 2010. A second funding round, for the 2010/2011 financial year, opens in April 2010.
"The Fund aims to encourage and stimulate communities to deliver their own promising solutions to local youth offending," says Child, Youth and Family Manager operational services Bernadine MacKenzie, who is leading the Fresh Start project. "This is a great opportunity for providers with new ideas or programmes that offer a different approach, particularly those with a focus on addressing the needs of Māori children and young people in the youth justice system."
A national selection panel will assess the applications and recommend programmes to be funded, with an expectation that services will be up and running from 1 May.
