Coventry is hosting a national conference on Monday to showcase a £1.2 million training project, which the city has piloted over the last two years.

The City Council's Chief Executive Iain Roxburgh is chairing the conference, and key speakers include Liz Walton from the Government's Social Exclusion Unit.

Local partners will run a series of workshops on project activities.

Throughout the conference, the City Council and partners in the voluntary, health and private sectors, will be demonstrating the success that the city has had in piloting the Action Learning for Local Development project.

The conference is open to anyone involved in establishing or managing regeneration programmes, and a number of free places are still available.

ALLD was a partnership led by Coventry City Council's Community Education Service - partners included voluntary, community and private organisations, Coventry University, the Health Authority, and the Council's Area Co-ordination initiative.

One of the projects has involved CWN Community putting five public access points in Foleshill for members of the public to use.

Through the Integra project, the aim has been to get different groups to work together to try and improve employment opportunities for people in the area.

CWN Community Project Manager Sue Webb said the access points had encouraged people to get to grips with computers by bringing both the machines and help to them.

She said:

"We’ve had people involved who would not normally come to a college. This is quite a unique way of working.

"It’s a prime example of how partnerships should work in the city and other programmes should learn from and copy this experience."

The aim of the ALLD project was to find ways for excluded people to improve the quality of their lives and communities.

This has been achieved by offering new skills, which increase employability, and by encouraging community activity, which benefits neighbourhoods.

Target groups included long-term unemployed people, former drug users, people with mental health concerns, people in disadvantaged communities, over fifties, and others facing multiple disadvantage.

City Council Chief Executive Iain Roxburgh, who will be chairing the conference, said:

"The Action Learning for Local Development project has proven to be a useful way of helping certain groups and individuals to overcome feelings of exclusion, and to both participate in and contribute to their local communities.

"Coventry has had a big success with this project and I hope that the lessons are spread rapidly to other communities both locally and around the country."

The conference is for managers and practitioners of training and regeneration schemes to share Coventry's good practice, and some free places are still available.