Join our dedicated team, of  community development staff.  You will predominately be working with communities in Allerdale and Copeland - 22 hours per week, starting salary £22,878 per annum, pro rata.  The office is based in Penrith, with options to work from home after probationary period.

You can find out more about ACT's work, download the job description, personal specification and application form by visiting our website www.cumbriaaction.org.uk 

ACTion with Communities in Cumbria (ACT) celebrated its 70th birthday at an AGM last week (Friday 19 October) and looked forward with a focus on neighbourliness for the future. Over 50 delegates, including ACT team members, Trustees and representatives of a wide range of community organisations, met at Braithwaite Institute near Keswick for the formal AGM, a celebratory cake marking ACT’s support for communities in Cumbria since 1948 and the launch of ACT’s Neighbourliness Works campaign.

Village hall volunteers joined ACTion with Communities in Cumbria (ACT) on Saturday to congratulate Thursby Parish Hall on becoming the first hall in Cumbria to receive a Hallmark Two award for good management, health, safety, security and licenses.

ACTion with Communities in Cumbria (ACT) is 70 in October and has used the publication of its Annual Review of 2017-2018 as an opportunity to celebrate the success of its approach of working with communities to make change happen across rural Cumbria.

ACTion with communities in Cumbria has been working with participants from seven village halls to design a Managing Risks Toolkit for the 300 plus halls across Cumbria.

The project aims to assist village halls to deal with the challenges of extreme weather events and other risks such as loss of income, issues within committees and other situations. It is funded by the Prince’s Countryside Fund and was awarded after Storm Desmond when a number of halls in Carlisle, South Lakeland and Allerdale were flooded.

ACTion with Communities in Cumbria (ACT) is supporting community resilience and emergency planning activities across Cumbria, as part of a 3 year BIG Lottery funded programme. This includes helping people to get together to share their experiences, think about future risks and what they might do to be better prepared.

ACTion with Communities in Cumbria (ACT) is 70 in October and using this milestone as an opportunity to celebrate the organisation’s past and also look to the future.

ACT’s Chief Executive Lorrainne Smyth says “We’ve changed our name several times in those 70 years, settling on ACTion with Communities in Cumbria back in 2008, but it is striking how little our aims, priorities and ways of working have changed since the beginning. We still rely on a core group of committed people as our staff and our Trustees and it’s still about making a difference by championing rural issues and working with communities.”

Village Halls around the country have been celebrating the first national Village Halls Week between 22^nd and 26^th January. Here at ACT we’d like to say a huge thank you for all the work you do in your communities and to share a few of the highlights in Cumbria and around the country.

ACTion with Communities in Cumbria (ACT) is encouraging village halls across the county to get involved in the first ever national #VillageHallsWeek starting Monday 22^nd January 2018. This is a week-long celebration to say a collective “thank-you” to all volunteers who work tirelessly to keep community buildings and village halls open for the benefit of their communities.