Local Action Network

Social Capital Huddersfield emerged when a small group of young Labour party supporters left a branch meeting feeling that they wanted to do something more dynamic than campaigning in the normal way. They wanted to reach out to younger people who were politically minded, and even progressive but not necessarily Labour party members.
 

Paddock Cricket Club in Huddersfield has just been nominated for a national award for their ground-breaking community initiative, Car Park Cricket.

The club exists in a deprived area of Huddersfield and it has only continued to exist because of the dedication of its members and it frequently being active in the local community.

As I sat and waited at a table in the cafe, Linda Massey served customers at the counter. She runs the cafe single-handedly with a group of dedicated volunteers. While the cafe is in a small single-storied pavilion in the park no bigger than a kitchen, it has become a focal point for the community around Brentford’s Boston Manor Park. Yet the Pavilion Cafe is only peripheral to the main purpose of her story, or rather that of the Friends of Boston Manor.

Masood Ajaib grew up in the Pakistani community within Birmingham and has been involved with community work for 5 years working to help provide to young people opportunities and experiences they wouldn’t necessarily otherwise have. Now heading the Comm:pact group based in the East of Birmingham Masood is aiming to expand the work of Comm:pact with greater coordination between projects and aiming to make them sustainable, and using the money made to fund new projects.