Author: davepickering

Out of School Clubs

Children in North Edinburgh Childcare’s Out of School Clubs have been busy as usual. Over recent weeks they have had the chance to enjoy a wide range of physical activity workshops including  judo, football and dance classes.  The children are now starting to get excited about Christmas.  They are decorating their clubs in preparation of the festive season and looking forward to the holiday club which will be open throughout the school holidays excluding public holidays.

North Edinburgh Childcare 

Global Citizenship

Global citizenship is a key feature of the curriculum in our nursery.  Children are encouraged to respect and value diversity by learning about different cultures from across the world.  We are therefore delighted to announce our partnership with Larbec International Academy, a school for children aged 2-12 years located in the Kumasi region of Ghana.  Two members of the nursery team will be visiting the school in Ghana early next year.  This will be followed shortly afterwards by a reciprocal visit from our Ghanaian partners who will spend time in our nursery providing everyone with the opportunity to learn more about one another’s cultures.  All of the children and staff are very excited about this venture and are currently fundraising to help meet the costs of the visits which are also being partly funded through the British Council’s Global Schools Partnership programme.

Theresa Allison

North Edinburgh Waterfront invites you to a Christmas celebration with live music, food, face painting, a Christmas film and much more. The 2011 Christmas Festival takes place at the Hub, Telford College on Thursday 15th December at 7pm – all are welcome.

My name is Norman Smith and I am minister of  the church of Scotland in Granton. I am writing to you in my capacity as  chairman of our Waterfront project that seeks to foster community between  existing and new communities of north west Edinburgh.  There is an excellent promotional video on our  website at www.new-community.org.uk and you may also find the other videos there interesting as  they record local community views expressed at the Community Festival in  2011.

Norman Smith

Alpha

‘Bearing in mind the financial situation, what actions can we take to maintain, develop and improve services in Edinburgh?’

That was the question posed to Forth and Inverleith residents at a meeting held in Heriots Rugby Club last week and more than 40 participants took the opportunity to express their views on what the council’s spending priorities should be at the local event.  The meeting was the last in a series of six consultation events organised by the city council across Edinburgh over recent weeks.

Opening the meeting Chief Financial Officer Karen Kelly gave a summary of where the City Council currently spends it’s money and went on to look at spending projections.  It was a gloomy prognosis – there’s no doubt Edinburgh, like all local authorities, faces tough financial challenges over the coming years, with significant savings needing to be made.  Longer term, it looks even tougher: demographic indicators suggest the city’s older population will grow considerably – the forecast is that there will be a 72% increase in the number of citizens over the age of 75 by the year 2035, putting added pressure on already stretched spending on health and social care budgets.

So how does the city address the challenges ahead?  It was over to Children and Families’ Gillian Hunt to conduct the main part of the exercise; facilitating small workshop groups to encourage ideas and discussion.  Individuals were asked to come up with ideas which were then fed into the bigger group and noted on flipcharts.  There was no shortage of ideas and suggestions – from the ‘do-able’ to the downright loopy – and the exercise ended with individuals being asked to prioritise their three ‘favourites’ and allocate points from some pretty long lists.  A bit like the Eurovision Song Contest …

Unfortunately – as inevitably happens at events like this – time was at a premium and some enthusiastic discussions were cut short as time ran out.  There was no time, either, for feedback from the various groups or an opportunity to elaborate on points raised in workshops.  Services for Communities chief Mark Turley, however, thought that the exercise proved very worthwhile.  Thanking participants, he said:  “I hope you have found this useful – I thought it was a very good event and we could have used a lot more time.  The findings of tonight’s workshops will be posted on the Neighbourhood Partnership websites and each of the political groups will receive a copy of the report.”

A summary of the workshop findings will appear on the Neighbourhood Partnership website soon:  go to:

www.edinburgh.gov.uk/neighbourhood-partnership

What do you think the Council’s spending priorities should be?  Let us know!

With the first snows of winter falling over the weekend, Pilton Equalities Project has drafted a severe weather contingency plan and circulated it to other local organisations for comment and suggestion.  PEP staff and volunteers came to the aid of many vulnerable local people last winter and manager Helen Tait is making sure that processes are in place to ensure that frail and elderly residents are protected as winter bites.

“Last winter’s weather was awful and we are making sure we are prepared just in case we see a repeat”, said Helen.   “We have contacted other local groups across the area to ensure that we are organised.  By working together and supporting each other there is no duplication – it’s important that the help available goes to where it’s most needed”.

Base on three priorities – Food, Heat and Health – PEP’s severe weather plan aims to get assistance to the most isolated members of the community – be that shopping, clearing paths, emergency heating or even setting up soup kitchens if it proves necessary.

Local organisations have been asked to contact PEP with suggestions by telephone on 315 4466 or by email pepequalities@btconnect.com