Problems and Purpose
The “Choose for Cheetham” initiative was implemented to address inequalities affecting young people in Cheetham Hill, Manchester, including limited opportunities, safety concerns, and a lack of influence over local funding decisions. Traditional grant-making processes were often criticised for cultural biases, ‘elite capture’, favouritism and a lack of transparency [3]. In response to these criticisms, Hope for Cheetham implemented youth-led participatory budgeting to ensure a more democratic and fairer allocation of investment funds. Its purpose was to empower children and young people to achieve their ambitions through voting on and seeing community-led projects implemented in Cheetham Hill. This initiative resulted in over £200,000 distributed to youth-focused social action, play services, mentoring and wellbeing projects to become implemented [3].
Background History and Context
Organizing, Supporting, and Funding Entities
The Hope for Cheetham steering group acted as the lead organising entity, overseeing the overall direction of the project. Having previously distributed funding only among existing member organisations, the steering group recognised that this approach excluded new organisations and lacked meaningful youth involvement, leading them to adopt PB as a more democratic alternative. In January 2025, the steering group met formally to agree on the structure of the voting events, how votes would be combined and weighted, and what would constitute a successful outcome [2]. The initiative was also supported by Young Manchester, who played a key role in coordinating and facilitating youth participation throughout the project [2]. Additional expert support was also provided by Shared Future, who specialise in setting up participatory budgeting programmes and were commissioned to assist with design aspects of the process. Shared Future developed templates and guidance materials to support smooth delivery and produced an evaluation report which assessed the effectiveness and outcomes of the initiative [2].
Funding for the initiative was provided by the Youth Endowment Fund and the #iwill fund, which enabled the allocation of over £200,000 to community-led projects and activities for young people in Cheetham Hill [3].
