£7000 grant for Loughgiel renewal

The initiative will see the village getting mentoring, taking part in a series of seminars/workshops, going on study visits to the South of Ireland, developing commercial linkages with waterford.

At last week’s meeting of Ballymoney Council members were told of two on-going projects working with Groups from outside the NER, the only NI group which is at implementation stage of co-operation projects.

The two projects are: Village Links – a partnership between North East and County Waterford, aimed at testing approaches to making villages and groups within those villages sustainable.

It involves five villages – Broughshane, Bushmills, Ballycarry, Loughgiel and Kilrea. The project involves a range of projects such as festivals and events, marketing, heritage promotion, signage and community facility enhancement. The programme will finish with a major conference in the North East area in early 2014.

The five villages are also actively working on their particular ideas and projects which should be implemented by the end of the year.

Innovative Village – a partnership between the North East Group, two LAG’s in Finland and a LAG in Estonia and a Finnish University, with the overall aim of piloting and evaluating different approaches to stimulate new services and activities in rural areas.