The Minister for Employment and Learning has issued new guidelines and criteria that will govern access to the European Social Fund, which is meant to reduce economic inactivity and increase workforce skills across the community in Northern Ireland.

The ESF is applied to by many community and voluntary sector organisations across Northern Ireland to help fund the projects they run that help lead to meaningful employment, from GCSE and ECDL courses, business enterprise and management, to community facilitation and confidence building courses, the organisations in your community that work directly with you are being eliminated from this important funding stream.

There are 3 main restrictions on the community and voluntary sector that make it not only impossible for them to apply but for those that still can, restrictive in what programmes they can offer.

1. Applicants must have a 10% cashflow, so applying for £100,000 means you need to have £10,000 in the bank that's unrestricted. Most organisations will not have this as they are likely running on a not for profit basis.

2. Applicants must get 35% match funding from another source, this is extremely difficult in today's funding climate, and those that cannot will not be eligible.

3. The ESF guidelines state that only level 1 projects can be supported. Level 1 is grade D and below, meaning if organisations offered a maths GCSE and students achieved the necessary grade C or above (level 2 grades) they may not be funded. This is penalising those who achieve higher and contradicts the purpose of the ESF since most places of work require a C grade or above for maths and english.

We ask you to sign this petition to Minister Farry asking him to STOP the restrictions on the European Social Fund grants so that our communities have access to meaningful learning opportunities.