Last week Copplestone successfully won
a £50,000 grant from the Big Lottery Fund to build a
community playing field and village hall.
Well done Copplestone!
Ken Warren, the organiser, tells us how they did it:
''The world of digital communication
is a wonderful thing. When we first started this journey to
apply for the Lottery Peoples Millions little did we realise
what it entailed, in effort and time. From filling in forms
and building a project profile for our fund requirements, to
winning our way through to the Television phone votes. We then
had to bring everyone together on a Wednesday afternoon,
including 45 children with the dads and mums for football
practice, and also the police.
We had about three weeks before
voting day to form a strategy to get people to vote for our
cause, but just a week before voting day we found that our
little village was up against Woodrow Project from Torquay.
How were we going to win against a large town like
Torquay?
The object of the lottery appeal was
to build a close community which has been missing from our
village. Copplestone has a population of 1000 residents,
with over 150 under sixteen's. Anti social behaviour is
quite a problem. There is no village hall or football pitch
and nothing for the young people to do. However, there is
a spark of hope for our village and that is a football club
for the five to ten year olds, which was started by Guy
Gibson and Hannah Edwards. They play on a small area of
grass at the side of the school. The club started with just a
few children on a Saturday morning, but now word has
spread and up to fifty children attend for training sessions.
Their energy and enthusiasm needs to reach the older
children in the village which in turn will reduce the ASB.
This was the basis of our appeal.
The parish council had purchased a
field just beyond the school but, as with all Devon fields,
this is not a level site. A large area of the land will have
to be levelled and drainage put in before laying the football
pitch. Once this has been achieved, our next project is to
build a community hall for the rest of the village.
So how did Copplestone, without a
community spirit, get our plea out to the wider world?. First
we contacted the local paper who we worked with throughout the
appeal. We then asked for volunteers to help deliver flyers to
the villagers explaining what we were attempting. As
always the same people offered their help. We then asked
for anyone who was familiar with Facebook and other
forms of communication to put the information out there, also
for people to e-mail friends and work colleagues.
One of the most difficult challenges
of the whole process was not knowing the telephone number for
people to vote until 4am on the morning of the appeal. We then
had to have four thousand flyers printed with the phone
number on to be delivered to all the local schools by 8am. A
team of villagers delivered the flyers to every house in the
village and to shops in our local town of Crediton. Tesco and
Morrisons were also targeted with various teams of people
handing out flyers throughout the day. My van was fitted with
loud speakers and driven through all the neighouring
villages asking people to watch the television appeal that
evening and vote for Copplestone. All this activity started to
build excitement in the village and in turn the seed of
building a community we so badly need has been born.''