We have supported a broad range of voluntary and community organisations, groups and social entrepreneurs that were involved in delivering services that directly contributed towards community development. We made progress in the following areas:

1. Access to information: Daily e-mails from different funding organizations, application forms and information on various community projects to faith and community groups on our mailing list. We also provide advice, information and support on completing various grant application forms. Through our meetings, we ensure that faith and community groups and our service users have access to relevant information.
   
2. Consultation: We support networks and forums and encourage groups to attend relevant events where issues relating to them are discussed. We inform local groups and individuals working with us about policy development and decisions of key agencies. We hold monthly forum meetings individually with our clients to discuss issues relating to them and the way forward. We work as consultants for Community Action Network, mentoring social enterprise start-ups to get funding, business planning and develop their projects. We worked as consultants to the Faith-Based Regeneration Network on the first round of funding by the Home Office under the Faith Communities Capacity Building Fund
   We worked as consultants for Employment Focus, who were holding conferences in different parts of the country as part of their black economic empowerment programme, in partnership with Job Centre Plus.
   
3. Community development: Nexgen has provided capacity building and organisational and personal development support to numerous voluntary and community organisations, a number of these groups were supported to set up from scratch, develop their ideas and run their activities.
   
4. Community engagement: We encourage groups to get involved with Neighbourhood Renewal initiatives, Community Forums and Community Councils; we promote community engagement across London, focusing on the areas with high concentration of BME communities (Southwark, Newham, Tower Hamlets, Lambeth, Greenwich, Lewisham, Sutton, Barking and Dagenham etc).
   
5. Community Management: By supporting individuals and groups with project development ideas, we empowered them to run sustainable services for some of the most excluded and disadvantaged people in the country including refugees and asylum seekers, young parents, older people, unemployed, etc.

We supported these groups in a range of activities aimed at strengthening organisations in a sustainable way. We provided:

• Social Enterprise start-up training;
• Project planning and development;
• Fundraising assistance and identifying sources of funding;
• Training needs analysis and access to training;
• Organisational development, governance, policies and procedures;
• Technical advice; constitutions, charity registration, finance;
• Informing and involving people in decision-making structures,
• Business and strategic plans;
• Dissemination of information;
• Linking projects with relevant statutory and voluntary sector agencies;
• Linking projects into local regeneration and renewal initiatives;

Nexgen Initiatives has worked with a wide variety of groups and has succeeded in building the capacity of a wide range of organisations in the voluntary and community sector. Examples of our work include outreach, training sessions, telephone advice, advice through email, and most importantly, through one-to-one meetings.

We give a combination of support in terms of fundraising, networking, providing resources, monitoring/evaluation, etc. We have provided at least 50 groups with support in fundraising, policy development as well as linking them with other networks, and advice on publicity and promotion. We have received favourable feedback from most groups on the support we have given.