We are delighted to announce that we have been awarded extension funding from The National Lottery Community Fund that will see the Ambition for Ageing programme continue through to the end of March 2022.

Ambition for Ageing is a part of Ageing Better; a seven-year, £78 million investment to improve the lives of people aged over 50 by addressing social isolation and loneliness within local communities.

We will be continuing to share our learning to address gaps that have emerged following the Coronavirus outbreak and produce further learning in relation to communities and ageing, as well as evidence linked to wider community development approaches. We will continue to work on the GMCA’s Ageing in Place programme by working with Local Authorities to identify community leadership in specific low-income communities and deliver a streamlined microfunding scheme all ten Greater Manchester local areas. We will be also microfunding activities in the 53 neighbourhoods accredited as ‘age-friendly’ through the Mayoral Challenge.

We have already begun work this winter to support Greater Manchester organisations to support marginalised older people with keeping well this winter through a series of briefing sessions.

OUR WORK

• LGBT Foundation

The LGBT Foundation previously supported our Equalities Board. Going forward, together we will be developing a project to support the development of community groups for LGBT people who have shared interests but live outside of dense population centres, guided by our work on engaging with dispersed groups.

• The Greater Manchester Older People’s Network, supported by Macc

Alongside continued work to ensuring older people’s voices are heard in GM policy and strategy, the GMOPN will deliver campaigns to build the profile of older people’s voices across GM and work to change public perceptions of older people.

• Manchester Institute for Collaborative research on Ageing (MICRA) based at the University of Manchester

Working with MICRA, we will continue to review equalities messages from the programme and build upon research already taking place on marginalised communities. We will be continuing with our regular seminar programme on a variety of academic topics related to ageing, the first taking place Spring 2021.

• Greater Manchester BAME Network

Our research on BAME communities has highlighted the need for much more specific community research so we will look to produce small insights reports into BAME community organisations with the support of the GM BAME Network, as well as to support BAME leaders to play a stronger role in policy development.

We are looking forward to working together to continue to reach and support older people through the difficult months ahead, and would like to thanks the National Lottery Community Fund for enabling us to do so.