14 May 2004

More than $400,000 to help community groups

More than 120 Auckland community groups have received grants totalling $403,000 from Auckland City’s Community Group Assistance Funding scheme.

Chairperson of Auckland City’s Community Services Committee, Councillor Graeme Mulholland, says the grants covered costs for website creation, staff training and promotional and marketing expenses and costs associated with specific projects and organisational development.

To be eligible for funding, the activities of a community group must have a city-wide focus (ie benefit more than three Auckland City community board areas). Groups also need to prove their ability to manage a grant and account for the use of public money.

Examples of groups which received funding include the Chinese Women’s Association of New Zealand, Torotoro Trust, Deaf Association of New Zealand, Lifeline, Family Matters, Rape Crisis Auckland and the Motutapu Outdoor Education Camp Trust.

Funding applications totalled $1.1 million from 194 community groups.

Mr Mulholland says the Community Group Assistance Fund is just one of the ways Auckland City assists community groups.

“The council provides various types of assistance to help ensure the needs of Auckland’s diverse community groups are being met,” he says.

Other Auckland City grants offered to community groups include the Arts Alive funding scheme for professional performing artists and organisations, Creative Communities grant and Community Board Local Funding.

ENDS

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Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>