Lorna Pearcey of West Midlands RCAN
Lorna Pearcey of West Midlands Rural Community Action Network (RCAN) has been delivering a project on community-led planning called Rurality and Empowerment. Its aim is to help communities to be able to affect the decision-making processes in their local area.
We are holding a regional event on Monday 17th May to celebrate EveryVoice Counts programme achievements through the 2009-10 . It will also look at how communities can get more involved in developing Community Strategies. The event will include:
* Presentations from Delivery Partners
* Participate in thematic workshops
* Hear about 2010-11 activities
To find out more you can visit the RAWM website.
At Every Voice Counts we work to make sure that people are empowered to get involved with making decisions about their local areas. Local authorities (county and local councils) are responsible for many of the decisions that get made in communities – from planning to transport, the collection of rubbish and the delivery of a host of other local services.
But how do those local authorities ensure that they’re in touch with the communities that they serve? Well, one way is through a document called a community strategy. This sets out how the local authority will engage with communities and ensure that those communities have an opportunity to get involved in decision making.
There’s an example of a community strategy that Coventry City Council is using here. And a really detailed explanation of why you might need a community strategy can be found on Devon County Council’s website.
On the 17th of May we’re holding the Making Community Strategies Work for Communities event. This, as the name implies, is a day when people who are involved in community empowerment can come and learn about how they can get involved in developing community strategies.
Davina Goodchild
Davina Goodchild of Youth Action Network is the delivery partner for the Young People and Empowerment project. (more…)
Joanna Matthews
Today, on our round of monitoring meetings with Every Voice Counts delivery partners we met up with Joanna Matthews, who is the project manager for the Regional Disability Network West Midlands. (more…)
Perry Walker
In the afternoon in Ledbury we met with Perry Walker, who works for the New Economics Foundation, to talk about his project, Rural Voices. As Perry explains in the interview, the project aimed to help citizens engage in a review of public services in the area. It’s a thought-provoking piece of work that has led Perry to some interesting observations.
[podcast]http://rawm.podnosh.com/files/2010/03/Perry-Walker-March-161.mp3[/podcast]
Lorna Pearcey
Lorna Pearcey has been developing a community-led planning approach to help communities across the West Midlands region. Pauline Dutton and I met with Lorna in Community First‘s office in Hereford where she’s based to find out how things were going. (more…)
On Tuesday – and on Wednesday and Thursday – we’ll be out to find out about some of the projects that the Every Voice Counts Partnership is involved in. (more…)
