The Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, has awarded £11m in funding towards employment, training and skills projects across London.

The Opportunities Fund grants will assist projects aimed at helping the capital’s most disadvantaged and excluded communities.

These include sports and leisure training for young people; a London Metropolitan University project to create 40 new women-led businesses; catering and hospitality training in Hammersmith & Fulham; support for Bengali women to start up and develop businesses and training in Islington and training and work placements for 200 Black and Ethnic Minority construction graduates.

More than 14,000 Londoners and 1,500 businesses will benefit from the investment from 2007 to 2010.

Organisations involved in the schemes are Sports Coaches UK, the Peabody Trust, City Gateway, Princes Trust and Centrepoint.

Livingstone said: “The fund will provide Londoners with the training and support they need to make the most of the huge opportunities brought by the London Olympics. The projects will train new sports coaches, cooks and builders, who are needed to make London 2012 successful.

“Groups who suffer from exclusion, such as lone parents, Black and Ethnic Minority communities and disabled Londoners, will get the advice and training they need to find work.

“And Londoners in every borough will benefit from Olympic opportunity projects, from Hillingdon to Havering to Hammersmith.”