Local projects compete for Lottery funding

The People's Millions contest is running on ITV regional news across the country, allowing viewers to to pick the winners in a bonanza of £50,000 cash awards from the Big Lottery Fund.

£2.5 million in Big Lottery Fund cash is up for public vote this week. Projects in each ITV region are going head-to-head on television. One hundred projects are competing for the cash roll-out to help make their community a better place to live. Viewers will see the projects on TV and vote by phone and text to support their favourite.

On Tuesday 1 November Victim Support Southwark is pitted against The AHOY Centre in Greenwich.

Victim Support Southwark wants to improve the appearance of vulnerable people's homes in Southwark who are less able to keep their property in a good state of repair. The purpose of the 'facelift' is to reduce the incidence of opportunistic burglaries and other crime such as vandalism. Volunteers will carry out the renovations and will be drawn from the local community and businesses.

On the next night of voting, Wednesday 2 November, St Mungo Community Housing Association in Waterloo will take on Aspland and Marcon Gardening Club of Hackney.

St Mungo Community Housing Association wants to continue to renovate the churchyard of St John's and through regeneration of places such as the children's play areas, bring it back into wider community use.

Sir Clive Booth, chair of the Big Lottery Fund said: "The Big Lottery Fund continues to explore new ways of connecting the public with the distribution of lottery funding in their area and the People's Millions programme is creating a buzz across the country. We received over 1,000 applications from a wide range of organisations to take part in the competition."

ITV chief executive Charles Allen said: "This is one of the most exciting and ambitious community based projects ever undertaken by ITV and a fantastic way to celebrate our 50th anniversary. I'm delighted that ITV is playing such a key role both in the regions and nationally with initiatives such as the People's Millions.

"One of ITV's greatest strengths as a broadcaster is our ability to connect with local people through our ground breaking regional programming. We now want to invite viewers to have a direct say on what they want their lottery good cause money spent on by tuning in to their local news programmes and putting their vote behind their favourite project."

Meanwhile Shakespeare's Globe is through to the UK final of The National Lottery Awards 2005 having been voted London and the South East's favourite Lottery-funded project.

Twelve projects representing regions across the UK will now compete in the final round of The National Lottery Awards.

Shakespeare's Globe is competing for the Amazing Space Award against Divis and the Black Mountain, Northern Ireland and Scotland's indoor climbing centre, Ice Factor.

The winner will be announced at The National Lottery Awards ceremony, hosted by Tess Daly, at the Eden Project in Cornwall on Friday 4 November. Highlights from the ceremony will be shown the following day during BBC1's National Lottery Draw programme.

• To register a vote for Shakespeare's Globe call 0845 434 9460 (calls to vote cost 1.5p on a BT landline) or log on to www.lotterygoodcauses.org.uk and click on National Lottery Awards. Voting closes on 3 November.