EVOC Blog - EVOC

David Hunter on Community Transport

30 August 2018 | Written by Alea Ibrahim | Leave a Comment

David Hunter on Community TransportWhen a voluntary group hears that someone is coming to talk about their transport, the first reaction is often “please don’t take our bus away!” So I’ve been privileged to spend six months at EVOC supporting an innovative project to improve transport for third sector day centres and lunch clubs. Ageing populations and increasing expectations […]

EVOC attends Social in the Gardens 2018

21 August 2018 | Written by Alea Ibrahim | Leave a Comment

EVOC attends Social in the Gardens 2018By Alea Ibrahim, Communications Intern for EVOC 150 Heritage Programme. The EVOC150 team seized the tropical Edinburgh weather last Friday and visited Social in the Gardens, organised by Edinburgh Social Enterprise. Locals and people from all over the world enjoyed a jam-packed entertainment programme of Highland dancing, storytelling and music until late in the evening. […]

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 […]