Jumping through hoops is how lottery applicants often describe their experience. I wonder if David Robinson of Community Links had this in mind when in his motivational talk to conclude the Big Lottery Fund’s People Powered Change event at the Lowry Centre in Manchester on Friday he described how dolphins learn to jump through hoops held high in the air by going through them in the water to reach their food, then find them raised inch by inch.
Empowerment Works is a movement of people and organisations committed to building support for community empowerment in the South West and beyond. For more information please visit the Empowering Communities website.
Monday, 28 March 2011
Friday, 11 March 2011
Now it's down to us to Keep Empowerment Working...
It's now a month since eighty of us packed into a buzzing conference room at Keeping Empowerment Working to think about how we measure and communicate the impact of the work that we do. The memory that has stayed with me was the strong sense of shared values that ran through the day, and the motivation that seemed to generate. I'm still delighted we chose the community-owned Southville Centre, as it's such a great example of what people can do when they work together. Thanks go to the speakers and workshop presenters who inspired and challenged us. The key points that resonated for me are:
Thursday, 10 March 2011
Research that pays off
Young mothers, people with current or recent experience of using local drug treatment services, community champions from Upper Horfield in Bristol, survivors of domestic abuse, and community activists from Torbay don’t sound like people who’d want to celebrate together. But they and more found much to share at a networking day yesterday organised by South West Foundation to bring together groups which had all completed Community Researcher training.
Monday, 28 February 2011
Your Local Budget on the road
The Big Society Network and NESTA were in Bristol on Friday for the second Your Local Budget (YLB) learning event on engaging people in local budgets and participatory budgeting (PB). It was good to find six other members of Empowering Communities' eighteen month old PB group also at Colston Hall, and some luminaries from the national scene, including Phil Teece of the Participatory Budgeting Unit and Simon Burall from Involve, down in Bristol again after speaking at our Keeping Empowerment Working event on 10th February.
Saturday, 19 February 2011
Community Led Planning and the Localism Bill – how full is the glass?
Planners, community representatives and people from the private sector – all experts in different ways – gathered in Tiverton on Thursday 17 February for an over-subscribed day organised by Empowering Communities with Creating Excellence, SWAN and Devon Heartlands Community Trust to consider the prospects for rural and urban communities in the new planning environment being created by the Localism Bill.
Chair Jim Claydon, a Board member of Creating Excellence and Past-President of RTPI, set the scene with a welcome for the Localism Bill and the opportunities it will offer. He had questions, however, on whether the reality will live up to many of the good principles behind it, and his mixture of welcome and concern was echoed by the speakers. Their presentations and other material is on the Creating Excellence website at this link, and more will be added. So this is just a discussion-starting sip of what they had to say:
Wednesday, 9 February 2011
Share your story
We know that good community empowerment makes a real difference to people's lives. It helps them to solve the problems and barriers that they face and improves quality of life and access to resources in their communities. It has the greatest impact on those that face the toughest barriers, such as single parents, refugees, social housing tenants and people who have had limited access to education. We want to tell those in power about the difference that community empowerment has made to people's lives, to explain why it needs to be supported and why it is such a good investment.
Exeter Refugee Support Group appeals to politicians to protect vital services to vulnerable people - call for your support
Following the recent Equal Rights Equal Voices event which discussed how to influence cuts affecting equality groups, Refugee Support Group in Exeter has written to key politicians to ask them to intervene on cuts in services to the most vulnerable, including refugees and asylum seekers.
Refugee Support Group (RSG) is at risk of closure because even though it does not receive direct public funding, charitable trust funding is becoming scarcer because of increased demand and the economic climate.
Refugee Support Group (RSG) is at risk of closure because even though it does not receive direct public funding, charitable trust funding is becoming scarcer because of increased demand and the economic climate.
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