Village SOS: Support, Outreach and Sustainability

Village SOS is all about helping communities to survive and thrive. We want to help communities become more enterprising. That might be by keeping services such as shops or playgroups alive for your village or by starting up a new enterprise that could create income to benefit your local area.

A community comes together for a BBQ
With more and more rural communities doing it for themselves Village SOS will help you to re-establish or reinvent services and reinvigorate your community.

Who can get involved with Village SOS?
Anyone with an interest in enterprising rural community action can become a member of the campaign – whether you’ve got experience to share, or want to learn from others, please sign up now to find out more.

Who can ask for support from Village SOS?
Projects, potential projects and organisations that provide a service to their local rural community with a population of fewer than 10,000. Once registered CCB, as a partner organisation, can help you through the process by providing advice and guidance

The five-step VSOS support package:
Step 1 – Sign up as a VSOS Member. Every project supported must sign up, as a VSOS member – it’s free!
Step 2 – More information needed. If you would like support as a project you’ll need to talk to the VSOS Hub, or your nearest partner organisation - CCB, to give us some more details about your project. You can express an interest on the member sign-up form and we’ll give you a call.
Step 3 – It’s all about action planning. You will get support and advice from your local VSOS partner organisation to develop an action plan for your project that matches your needs, ability and timescales.
Step 4 – Action. Through one-to-one support locally, and with the help of expert mentors, you will bring your project’s plan of support to fruition.
Step 5– Preparing for the future. Once your plan of support is complete, a final report of all activity will be written up by your support organisation, this may also include future actions for your consideration.

Who is my local support organisation?
Village SOS is a UK-wide campaign, and there are local partners in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland available to help you now. This ensures communities are able to access support and advice from an organisation that knows their area. In Berkshire the Community Council for Berkshire is the local partner - contact us on admin@ccberks.