COMMUNITY groups are being encouraged to bid for funding to run hate crime events in connection with next year’s Hate Crime Awareness Week.

Bolton CVS in partnership with Bolton Be Safe Partnership has a pot of up to £15,000 – which may stretch to £18,000 – to pay for a variety of activities to raise the profile of the offences in which victims are subjected to verbal or physical abuse on the basis of their race, religion, disability or belonging to a sub-culture.

It is the fourth year such specialised funding has been available and the deadline for applications closes in six weeks.

More than 40 people attended a showcase and information day held at The Bolton Hub in Bold Street in Bolton town centre on Friday to celebrate past successful events and explain how the funding scheme will work.

One of the accomplishments highlighted was held by Bolton Hindu Forum in May.

Project manager Paras Agravat said: “We incorporated it into our annual ‘women together’ event – a women’s empowerment day – where we have presentations and performances and there’s a different theme every year, whether it is health, social issues or domestic issues, anything the ladies feel is important.

“We had 200 women present and the biggest thing for us was getting the awareness out there so people know what hate crime is and how it can be reported.

“We held a workshop where we asked questions and women wrote their answers.”

The event was held at Ellesmere Road Social Club in Ellesmere Road in Morris Green and had speakers including Detective Inspector Charlotte Cadden, the hate crime lead for Bolton, and Samina Khan, the community safety officer at Bolton Council.

Bolton Hindu Forum had bid for and received £500 from the 2015 funding round to support the day.

Mr Agravat said: “We will definitely do something again this year.

“This year’s event was just for women and we can do one for the whole community.

“We’re the umbrella organisation for more than 30 groups including youth groups, women’s groups and older groups and it will be about bringing them all together.”

Another success was a project run by The Lancashire Wildlife Trust in partnership with Johnson Fold Community Action Group.

The trust’s senior manager James Hall said: “We held a series of events at The Hive at Moss Bank Park with a focus on introducing people to food from different cultures and through that we brought up the issue of hate crime.

“It was held for families and involved all sorts of different activities: tasting and finding out how to cook a dish.

“The Hive is a produce growing site so we able to use fresh ingredients and cook over an open fire, things like a curry with flatbread.”

Mr Hall said: “We have not finished yet and we have another event coming up and we’ll culminating by doing a new little recipe book from some of the dishes cooked and in that book will be information about hate crime and how to report it.”

Groups were invited to a showcase to learn about past projects funded by the Bolton CVS pot.

Mark Grundy, the funding and grants officer for Bolton CVS, said: “Hate crime is targetting people just because they are different.

“We in Bolton want to celebrate our differences.”

He said grants of around £500 are available for one-off events tied into the Hate Crime Awareness Week to be held between February 6 and February 12 next year.

Up to £2,000 can be awarded to longer term projects operating roughly for seven months between February and September and there needs to be a “tangible product in the end” such as videos, posters or artwork.

Priority will be given to partnership applications involving two or more organisations and applications must be received by November 28.

Other examples of past projects making an impression include Bolton Wanderers Community Trust’s events combining football and hate crime awareness and the Zac Bar’s making an album of anti-hate crime music to be released in the October half term.