We help riot-hit communities to shepherd youths who stray

Community projects in riot-hit areas of London are set to benefit from the Evening Standard's Dispossessed Fund.

Grants will be given to projects designed to lead to long-term change. A separate fund, We Love London, will support small shopkeepers and rebuild the high streets ransacked by yobs.

Stephen Hammersley of the Community Foundation Network, which administers the Dispossessed Fund, said: "It is humbling to see evidence not only of the extraordinary resilience of Londoners, but of what can be achieved by positive people working together to make positive change happen. It is inspiring to see local people realising that by working together they can make such a difference."

One of the first community projects to be helped is on the Moorlands Estate in Brixton. Dorothy Bell, 77, set up her first community project in the area more than 30 years ago.

"I sold my house in 1979 to set things up because the youth around here were like sheep without a shepherd," she said. Her Moorlands Community Development Project already helps 250 local people with everything from craft classes to gardening workshops.

Using a grant from the Dispossessed Fund, she now plans to run education programmes for local people, and create a safe park area for locals where they can meet, and even grow food.

"These people have nowhere to go. There is nowhere for these people, nothing for them to do - they are roaming the area. The looting and rioting were done for two reasons, malice and jealousy," she said, adding that the key to ensuring the riots do not happen again is "education, education, education ... We want to use the grant to teach people how to communicate, and about ethics - without that, they can't do anything."

The project spans every generation on the nearby estates, from teaching young people to read and write, to craft skills for the elderly. A local hotspot for drug dealers was torn down to create Loughborough Park.

Mrs Bell said: "We now have a place locals can come. With our grant, we plan to build an edible hedge, and expand our community growing project with vegetables and fruit. We want a bench and tables to give a nice area for the elderly."

"The Dispossessed Campaign can help a lot," said MP Nick Hurd, Minister for Civil Society, who visited the project yesterday. "There's a sequence to this. Step one is law and order, and I think that's in hand now. Step two is punishment and consequences, and step three is the need to have a serious discussion about the complex issues that underlie the looting and the rioting.

"Organisations like Dorothy's have an important role, as they have the trust and respect of communities. These projects have to be part of the solution, but they need help - the sort of support the dispossessed fund was set up to give."

Sonal Shah, executive director at the Capital Community Foundation, which is involved in the dispossessed fund and We Love London, said: "By supporting groups like this, Londoners can really help to make a difference."