Community Building Ventures is the home of a new transnational project developed to create opportunities for young people from disadvantaged areas in the UK to utilise their building/training skills for the benefit of communities in Southern India.

The project was developed in partnership with COMMACT (Commonwealth association for Local Action and Economic Development), Community Business Scotland international (the international network of Community Business Scotland), Renton Development Trust (Scotland), the Hilda Trust and Read Centre, non governmental organisations working with communities in Southern India. The partnership has built upon a long standing set of relationships between the agencies involved.

The development phase took place in 2006, where members of the partnership met in Southern India and developed a rolling programme of construction and personal development activities. The first phase took place in early 2007, where two groups of young people from Teesside and Glasgow (Renton Development Trust) travelled to Bangalore to help build a classroom and an office at the Jamboo Savari Dinne school on behalf of the Read Centre (the school serves slum dwellers in South Bangalore), who have a long established working relationship within the school. Staff at Community Campus and from the Renton Development Trust are sponsoring new teachers at the school and building a longer – term relationship with the Read Centre.

The planned next phase is for further groups of young people to contribute to the building of a community centre in conjunction with the Hilda Trust in Kerala and a rural housing project north of Bangalore again with the Read Centre. Funding has already begun for the next phase, with the people involved in phase 1 taking the lead, inspired by the welcome they received and the experiences and feelings of their personal involvement in the building of the classroom and for the sense of achievement in taking part in transnational project.