I am a community development worker for Positive Futures (Libertus services). I am currently engaging with people aged 50+ in the Muirhouse, Granton and Pilton areas, to facilitate community led self-supporting activity groups to alleviate social isolation.
We are particularly keen to increase the numbers in our allotment group at Lauriston Farm allotments as well as making contact with anyone in the area with an sewing skills or learning the same, with a view to starting a new sewing group in the very future at Birnie’s court community room.
Baz Simcock
Positive Futures Community Development Worker Libertus Service
LINK UP at North Edinburgh Arts is running an Activate course in partnership with the University of Glasgow.
This is a foundation course in community development. It is open to community members young and old, in the North West Locality. The course is fully funded.
There a will be an online information session on 11th February with the course beginning in person on 18th February: 9:30 – 1pm for 12 weeks (times and venue to be confirmed).
Spaces are limited if you have any interest or require further information contact the Link Up team on 07493876130 or by email:fionab@northedinburgharts.co.uk
Foundation Scotland have worked with Scottish Community Development Centre (SCDC) to produce a final evaluation of their Response, Recovery and Resilience (RRR) Fund.
The evaluation offers insight into the difference the RRR Fund has made to groups and communities across Scotland and the challenges that lay ahead. By the time the fund closed in April 2021, it had supported 1190 organisations across the country. Thanks to the National Emergencies Trust and the generous support of our donors, more than £7.4 million was distributed.
This report is the second evaluation of the RRR Fund. The first Rapid Evaluation of the RRR Fund was published in May 2020 and focussed on the first few weeks of the Response phase.
The July 2021 evaluation focuses on organisations who received funding in the Recovery and Resilience phases and includes survey data from more than 150 grantees plus detailed feedback from several focus groups.
The evaluation includes 14 recommendations and learning points within the following headings:
Impact on communities and project beneficiaries
Impact on community projects/organisations
Impact on Community Infrastructure
Challenges and Opportunities
The evaluation also includes several case studies from North Edinburgh’s Fresh Start, the Village Storytelling Centre in Glasgow, Headway in East Lothian, Clifftops Project in West Dunbartonshire and the Whitburn and District Community Development Trust in West Lothian.
Joyce Cattanach, Development Officer for Headway East Lothian, said:”Our Funders were wonderful in their response to the pandemic and the impact social isolation and loneliness would have on our already disadvantaged community.
“We sourced additional funding streams that had set up emergency responses; built up a strategy; and changed our outcomes and activities to respond and enable us to continue to work in a different way.”
The survey data, focus group feedback, and SCDC recommendations within the evaluation will help shape future funding and service development at Foundation Scotland.
To read more, view or download a copy of the full report using the link below:
The Place-based Programme Learning Exchange, a collaboration of national organisations that champion ‘place’ in their practices, has released a report highlighting what works and what doesn’t in place-based approaches.
This report aims to share these key learnings to enhance both the scale and quality of place-based working across Scotland, and draws on over 50 years of combined organisational experience and learning across dozens of urban and rural place settings.
A new Scotland wide inquiry into how communities can hold the power to lead on change from within has appointed two independent Co-Chairs with extensive experience of supporting people who are most excluded in society.
The Social Action Inquiry will support communities to take action together, create change and share power, whilst working alongside them to understand what helps and what gets in the way of progress.
Led by people living and working in Scottish communities, this three-year independent inquiry will:
Provide money and power to communities to undertake activity, which they direct and lead on.
Support people to find their voices, take action and use what they learn to create wider change.
Try to make change as it goes along, partly by bringing together people who hold power, and those currently furthest from it.
Build evidence for longer term change in Scotland.
Sam Anderson and Catherine-Rose Stocks-Rankin join the Inquiry as the newly appointed Co-Chairs. They will be passionate advocates for participation, collaboration and shifting power so that change is led by the knowledge held by communities.
Sam is the Founder of The Junction (Young People, Health & Wellbeing), an award-winning charity based in Edinburgh which works with and for young people on a range of health issues.
She brings extensive experience as a coach, mentor and facilitator supporting people furthest from power to feel understood and heard amongst systems that might otherwise exclude them.
Sam said: “Social Action has been a significant part of my life journey. I am therefore delighted the need for an Independent Social Action Inquiry for Scotland has been recognised and invested in.
“I feel honoured to be able to contribute to this important Inquiry through the role of Co-Chair and to see the potential of Social Action unleashed in our journey towards an equitable Scotland.”
Catherine-Rose is a social researcher with a wealth of professional, research and personal experience of care. Her experiences of kinship care and as an informal carer have inspired her to build a career that explores how the systems we live within could be reimagined.
Catherine-Rose said: “I am honoured to take up the role of Co-chair of the Social Action Inquiry. As someone who has tried to build community around every significant challenge in my life, I’m thrilled to contribute to an Inquiry that will help us galvanize the ways we take action together.
“I’m particularly delighted that we can shine a light on the work that people and communities are already doing in Scotland, to have the resource to strengthen that activity and the support to think about where power can be redistributed to making meaningful change.”
Catherine-Rose and Sam will shortly be recruiting an Inquiry Panel, along with an Inquiry Lead. If you’d like to apply to join the Inquiry Panel to help direct the Inquiry’s activity, or be part of the team as the Inquiry Led, please keep an eye on our website for announcements: https://socialaction.scot/
The Inquiry will also build on the findings and recommendations from the Together We Help research that explored social action in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Find out more about the Social Action Inquiry vision and background here:
Speaking on behalf of the partners who have founded the Inquiry – Carnegie UK Trust, Corra Foundation, Foundation Scotland, the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE), Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO), The National Lottery Community Fund, and The Robertson Trust – Fiona Duncan (CEO of Corra Foundation) said: “This inquiry starts from the idea that social action is a vital part of the solution to the challenges we face as a society – now and in the future.
“The issue is not whether community-led action should be at the heart of creating lasting change, but how everyone can help create the conditions for this to happen, and to flourish.
Collaboration is at the heart of this, and it’s down to the collective efforts of the partners that we’ve reached this point. The partners are delighted to welcome Sam and Catherine-Rose and look forward to the Inquiry taking shape and beginning to help bring about change.”
Scottish Community Development Centre (SCDC) is delighted to announce the ten community groups who will be supported to carry out community-led action research and develop their own evidence to influence change in their communities.
We’re also pleased to announce that Corra Foundation and Inspiring Scotland have provided additional funding for projects they support to be involved in Knowledge is Power. This has helped increase the number of supported projects from six to ten. We are also really grateful that Scottish Families Affected by Alcohol and Drugs will part sponsor one of the local inquiries.
The successful groups are:
Aberdeen in Recovery
Auchinleck Community Devlopment Initiative
Community Action Blackburn
Crossroads Youth & Community Association (in partnership with Bridging the Gap)
The research evidence generated by the community organisations will be brought together through the Knowledge is Power website and used to help shape policy at a national level across Scotland.
The programme is being delivered by Scottish Community Development Centre and The Poverty Alliance and funded by The National Lottery Community Fund and Scottish Government.
Local groups Power to the People and Spring Chickens got together to arrange a surprise summer tea party for popular community worker Lynn McCabe last month. Lynn has decided to take a career break and friends and colleagues couldn’t let her go without saying thanks for the wonderful work Lynn has carried out over the best part of thirty years in North Edinburgh.Continue reading Groups thank Lynn with farewell tea party
Community Action North (CAN) seeks a Community Development Worker (Fixed term 7 months, 28 hours per week) to develop and implement the community engagement and capacity and capabilities development work required to deliver the Aspiring Communities Fund Programme’s aims.
Aspiring Communities Fund support for local project CAN
Community and third sector projects have been allocated a share of £29 million, to find new ways to tackle poverty and improve people’s lives. Among them is North Edinburgh’s Community Action North (CAN), awarded over £200,000 from the Aspiring Communities Fund.Continue reading Can we tackle poverty? Yes, we CAN!
Friends and colleagues joined Community Action North development worker Andy Dalzell for leaving drinks in The Baillie in Stockbridge last night. The big guy from Philadelphia worked in North Edinburgh for only a few short months – but the genial giant has left his mark.Continue reading Adios, Andy!
