In 2012 Nottingham Building Society (The Nottingham) approached Sam & Amy and asked them to help promote its 'Grants For Good' campaign. Sam and Amy and the rest of the crew at Gem 106 helped The Nottingham enormously and by the end of the application period over 80 groups had applied for funding.

Following on from the success of last year, 'Grants for Good' is helping people become more employable in 2013 by supporting projects that provide proper job training and skills, access to relevant qualifications and help in finding jobs.

Gem 106 also appreciates just how important it is to help people find work and because of this have agreed to support Grants for Good 2013.

After receiving lots of very impressive applications from local projects, we can now reveal this year's winners!

• Communities Inc, Nottingham (grant of £4,375) - Communities Inc was established by Michael Henry and Shamsher Chohan as a response to the lack of creativity and innovation being demonstrated by not for profit organisations when seeking to challenge inequalities and tackle discrimination and deprivation in an environment of ever decreasing resources.
  See Their Website
  

• Hope Nottingham, Beeston (grant of £5,000) - Hope Nottingham Unites Christians in Mission to work together in the local areas where they live and work, in towns and suburbs all around Nottingham. It is building on the Hope NG9 model of enabling positive relationships between churches and with other community leaders.
  See Their Website
  

• The Other Space, Beeston (grant of £4,072) - The Other Space is a community arts project seeking to close the gap between being unemployed and returning to the corporate world. They offer workshops and classes to members of the public which are run by volunteers who are long-term unemployed. This encourages the volunteers to take ownership, increases their confidence and improves their CV, simultaneously the public benefit from the courses.

Thank you to all the organisations and projects who sent us applications this year, it was a very difficult choice to select our finalists but we are delighted to be able to support such worthwhile schemes across our region.