EVOC Blog - EVOC

Why Pride is the Essence of Community Powered Civic Action

19 June 2018 | Written by Alea Ibrahim | Leave a Comment

Why Pride is the Essence of Community Powered Civic ActionSaturday (16th June) marked Edinburgh’s celebration of Pride. Thousands of LGBTQ+ people and their allies marched from Holyrood, up the Royal Mile, over George IV Bridge and out on to Bristo Square dressed to impress, wearing glitter and smiles. Although Pride has become synonymous with glitter and rainbows, there is a deeper meaning to why […]

Guest Blog: Scottish Older People’s Assembly

30 April 2018 | Written by Ella Simpson | Leave a Comment

Guest Blog: Scottish Older People’s AssemblyGlenda Watt from The Scottish Older People’s Assembly provides a guest blog on SOPA in Parliament Clare Adamson MSP, Tom Berney Chair of Scottish Older People’s Assembly and Jeane Freeman OBE MSP and Minister for Social Security began the proceedings of our 9th Assembly in the Scottish Parliament on Monday 23 April 2018. We had […]

What it’s like to be a Trustee

23 April 2018 | Written by Ella Simpson | Leave a Comment

What it’s like to be a TrusteeMy main motivation, initially, for getting involved in charities, was that I had recently moved to Edinburgh and didn’t know anyone in the City aside from my new work colleagues. I joined a charity as a volunteer and after finding out they were looking for a new treasurer, decided to join their board of trustees. […]

The Women Who Shaped Edinburgh’s Social Welfare

8 March 2018 | Written by | Leave a Comment

The Women Who Shaped Edinburgh’s Social WelfareEdinburgh Voluntary Organisations’ Council reaches the grand old age of 150 this year. From April, we intend to spend much of the next year researching the reason for EVOC’s formation, the social and civic context it operated within, and the extraordinary people that have been involved the Organisation in some way or another. With that […]

Isn’t it great when things really are learnt from good practice?

19 December 2017 | Written by 15923 2 | Leave a Comment

Isn’t it great when things really are learnt from good practice?Isn’t it great when things really are learnt from good practice? When my colleague Katherine, David (from the Cooncil) and I set off on our 6 hour round train trip on a Friday morning to North Ayrshire I wasn’t absolutely convinced it was great use of more than one third of my working week hours […]

Constructing Space

24 November 2017 | Written by Ella Simpson | Leave a Comment

Constructing SpaceWhen I welcomed you to the Conference on 7th November I said our ambition was to challenge you. I was clear that over the next 3 to 5 years things were probably going to get beyond tough. We know that public funds will diminish, other funders have reducing resources and we have increasing demand. So […]

“Doing things right means doing the right things”

24 November 2017 | Written by Christina Hinds | Leave a Comment

“Doing things right means doing the right things”This tongue twister of a workshop title comes from a Governance Institute paper called “Cultural Markers: Assessing, measuring and Improving Culture in the Charitable Sector”. I think it really captures the essence of good governance and why it’s so important and this was the focus of this workshop at our Conference. We had a discussion […]

Social (in)security?

24 November 2017 | Written by Maria Arnold | Leave a Comment

Social (in)security?At our Conference, Scottish Government presented an overview of the current landscape in terms of the devolution of £2.8bn of benefits from UK to Scottish Government, the new agency which will be established and the Experience Panels which have been set up to allow those with lived experience of the current benefit system to inform […]

Prevention within the Context of Grants Review and Funding Cuts

24 November 2017 | Written by Ian Brooke | Leave a Comment

Prevention within the Context of Grants Review and Funding CutsIn light of the forthcoming review of the Health and Social Care grants programme, we facilitated a workshop at our Conference to investigate the merits of a third sector lead Commission on Prevention. The busy workshop explored issues and voiced opinions on what exactly we mean by ‘prevention’ and how might the third sector effectively […]

Participatory Budgeting an Effective Tool for Community Engagement?

24 November 2017 | Written by 15923 2 | Leave a Comment

Participatory Budgeting an Effective Tool for Community Engagement?Jez Hall from PB Partners lead a workshop on Participatory Budgeting at our Conference, this workshop built on the work of EVOC to: raise awareness of Participatory Budgeting with the third sector continually evaluate PB projects being run across Edinburgh from a third sector viewpoint in order that learning from projects can be shared with […]