ONE of the most difficult questions I come across – a pretty normal, innocent question you’d think – is “So, what’s your work about, then?”

Well, you try and explain ‘Third Sector participation in Community Planning’ to someone who’s never heard of it before!

Sometimes I say “I work in the Voluntary Sector,” at other times “I work in an office,” does fine. But my favourite is: “I work with anyone who will work with us – to reduce inequalities.” It’s my favourite because while not everyone knows what ‘the Third Sector’ is, and even fewer have heard of ‘Community Planning,’ very nearly everyone I meet knows immediately and instinctively what we mean by ‘inequalities.’

But do we?

Epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett in their book The Spirit Level and through their organisation The Equality Trust have done sterling work to promote the proposition that more equal societies work better for everyone.

Social Research and Development pioneers the Joseph Rowntree Foundation consistently publish compelling evidence of the harm caused by social inequalities in the UK.

Fair Society, Healthy Lives, Sir Michael Marmot’s seminal Review of Health Inequalities in England, provided an incisive analysis of unequal health outcomes, their causes, and what we could do to reduce health inequalities.

The excellent interactive Scottish Neighbourhood Statistics website allows visitors to map inequalities in (for example) economic activity, education, health and housing.

Most credible commentaries on equalities will maintain that behind ‘outcome’ inequalities such as in health, education or housing lie the inequalities of age, disability, gender, race, etc – and that what makes these inequalities particularly pernicious is the unequal distribution of power – with very, very few exercising power over the many.

These commentators will often hold that attempting to address these social inequalities are fated to fail, unless we redress the imbalance of power which drives and determines unequal outcomes for people and communities.

What would a redistributive approach to the unequal spread of power in Scottish society today actually do? How might people and communities traditionally excluded from power over their own lives have their rightful power returned? Is it part of the work of Scotland’s Third Sector to support and enable community empowerment?

These are some of the questions which lie at the heart of the Scottish Government’s Community Empowerment agenda. And we want your help in answering them.

The Scottish Government has announced its intention to take forward a Community Empowerment and Renewal Bill – probably early in 2012 – and the team which is currently ‘at the early stages of developing the scope of the Bill,’ is seeking initial input on the scope and content of the Bill, and on the best way to engage with communities.

This is where you come in – EVOC is hosting a ThinkSpace event from 9.30am to 12.30pm on Wednesday 16^th November in our office (14 Ashley Place – EH6 5PX) to gather views on the Scottish Government’s upcoming Community Empowerment and Renewal Bill. All Third Sector colleagues are welcome to join us – please register your attendance via the Events link and take a moment to respond to a few questions in our Survey.

EVOC will gather and analyse your views, and will present a submission on behalf of Edinburgh’s Third Sector to the Scottish Government team progressing the Bill.

We are keen to stimulate a positive discussion, hopeful that we will be able to present a coherent and credible submission to the Scottish Government team to help their thinking around how Scottish legislation can make a difference to the imbalance of power that blights the lives and the life chances of so many of our fellow citizens.

Join the debate!

 

Some background reading might help your thinking:

In 2009 the Scottish Government published its Community Empowerment Action Plan – Celebrating Success, Inspiring Change.

In its Party Manifesto 2011, the Scottish National Party said: We propose a Community Empowerment and Renewal Bill, which will make it easier for communities to take over underused or unused public sector assets. [https://manifesto.votesnp.com/voluntary_sector_volunteers_manifesto]

The Scottish Government published in February 2011 a Regeneration Discussion Paper – Building A Sustainable Future.

The Christie Commission on the Future Delivery of Public Services said: “While we recognise that the acquisition of assets can be a catalyst for community development, we believe that a new Bill must include a more comprehensive incentive to community empowerment. We recommend that in developing proposals for a Community Empowerment and Renewal Bill the Scottish Government explores the potential of the Bill to promote:

• significantly improved community participation in the design and delivery of public services;
• and action to build community capacity, recognising the particular needs of communities facing multiple social and economic challenges.”

In its response to the Christie Commission report, the Scottish Government said:

Our priorities for improving partnership during this Parliament include:

• developing a Community Empowerment and Renewal Bill that will significantly improve community participation in the design and delivery of public services, alongside action to build community capacity, recognising the particular needs of communities facing multiple social and economic challenges.

The Improvement Service has published a research paper in part ‘to draw attention to the stark inequalities that exist,’ Making Better Places, Making Places Better.

At the UK level the National Institute for Economic and Social Research has recently published a set of research reports on the nature, scale and future prospects for inequalities in the UK.

 

Now that EVOC has this super duper new website, I wanted to let you know how you can keep in touch with us and follow us as there are a number of new ways that we are communicating with everyone. So get a cup of tea and relax and have a read and please get in touch if you have any questions.

RSS Feeds – or more simply know as “Really Simple Syndication”

RSS feeds are a great way of getting instant updates on when we publish content to our website, as they are instantly updated and you don’t have to wait on newsletters being sent out.

Our clever website software creates feeds for all different categories and content so you can easily select which categories you want and don’t want.

To view them you can either add the feed address to Outlook 2007, or get what’s called a desktop reader, something like FeedDemon (https://www.feeddemon.com/) is very easy to use, or if you want an internet based one how about Google Reader (https://www.google.com/reader)

At the bottom of the post I’ve listed all the feed addresses so you can pick what you want.

Newsletters

Using our super duper new website we can easily create different types of newsletters where you can select what kind of content updates you require. Using a piece of online software called Mailchimp (which is very cool and lets you send 6 emails to 2000 people for free every month).

On every page of our website there is a box  on the right hand side where you can enter your email address, and when you click submit you can then select which newsletters you want to receive and what types of information from noticeboard you want to receive, very clever!

Our newsletters include:

• Monday updates from EVOC
• The Tuesday Noticeboard
• EVOC Learning Wednesday’s
• And Children and Young People & Families Thursdays

Blog

A bit of a given since you are already reading this but EVOC has a blog which all our staff can write in so you can follow what’s going on with us and our work streams, and of course, you can use the blog RSS feed to get instant updates, or sign up for Monday updates from EVOC newsletter to be kept in the loop.

Twitter

EVOC as boldly launched into Twitter with almost all staff having twitter accounts now and the staff tweeting away. We have one main evoc account https://twitter.com/evoc_edinburgh and then members of staff accounts follow the pattern of evoc_staff-first-name so mine for example (should you want to follow my tweets) is evoc_tom. And you can use twitter online, on your smartphone, or you can download TweetDeck (https://www.tweetdeck.com) and follow and tweet from your desktop.

Facebook

We have also established and EVOC Facebook page which we use to publish all our content to as well, as well as updates and anything else we want to spread into the world. You can like us and follow us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/EVOCEdinburgh

We also have a delicious account but haven’t quite started using that yet so we’ll update you when that becomes available.

So we look forward to connecting with you, tweeting with you and please take advantage of everything above to get what you need from us. And if you have suggestions for other ways we can communicate our information, then we are always happy to hear from you.

 

RSS Addresses

EVOC News

• https://www.evoc.org.uk/feed/atom?post_type=post 

EVOC Blog

• All Blog items https://www.evoc.org.uk/feed/atom?post_type=notice 
• Category: Director’s blog https://www.evoc.org.uk/blog-category/directors-blog/feed
• Category: Network https://www.evoc.org.uk/blog-category/network/feed

 Noticeboard category feeds

• All Noticeboard items https://www.evoc.org.uk/feed/atom?post_type=notice
• Category: Announcements https://www.evoc.org.uk/noticeboard-category/announcements/feed
• Category: Archive https://www.evoc.org.uk/noticeboard-category/archive/feed
• Category: Children and young people https://www.evoc.org.uk/noticeboard-category/children-and-young-people/feed
• Category: Consultations  https://www.evoc.org.uk/noticeboard-category/consultations/feed
• Category: Events  https://www.evoc.org.uk/noticeboard-category/events/feed
• Category: Funding  https://www.evoc.org.uk/noticeboard-category/funding/feed
• Category: Opportunities  https://www.evoc.org.uk/noticeboard-category/opportunities/feed
• Category: Resources/Publications  https://www.evoc.org.uk/noticeboard-category/resources-and-publications/feed
• Category: Training  https://www.evoc.org.uk/noticeboard-category/training/feed

 Training Course Category feeds

• All Training Courses: https://www.evoc.org.uk/feed/atom?post_type=training_course
• Category: Governance https://www.evoc.org.uk/course_categories/governance/feed/atom
• Category: Managing People https://www.evoc.org.uk/course_categories/managing-people/feed/atom
• Category: Meeting Skills https://www.evoc.org.uk/course_categories/meeting-skills/feed/atom
• Category: The Law  https://www.evoc.org.uk/course_categories/the-law/feed/atom
• Category: Upskilling  https://www.evoc.org.uk/course_categories/upskilling/feed/atom
• Category: Your Development  https://www.evoc.org.uk/course_categories/your-development/feed/atom

Monday 17^th October is International Day for the Eradication of Poverty and the theme for 2011 is “From Poverty to Sustainability: People at the Centre of Inclusive Development.“

People around the world are using the Twitter Hashtag #EndPoverty today.

Whether at a global level or locally, all of us recognise that many of the key causes of poverty are beyond our immediate control. In Edinburgh today the lives of people in poverty are affected by a range of ‘macro‘ factors including the continuing impacts of the financial crisis of 2008, global energy prices, the current crisis in the eurozone, and the UK Government’s singular focus on deficit reduction – to name but a few.

I firmly believe that it would be wrong, though, to throw our hands up in the air crying ‘This problem is just too big! There’s nothing we can do!’ And I’ll tell you why:

• First, social change driven by ‘ordinary’ people does happen – who’d have expected the overthrow of authoritarian regimes in the Arab Spring?
• Second, public apathy disempowers us all – if we want to enhance people’s agency, control and voice we must start with ourselves.
• Third, ‘small’ improvements make ‘big’ differences ­– helping one young person access opportunities (for example) might not cure all of society’s ills, but it could change one young person’s life forever.

So, what are you going to do today, this week, this year? What do you want to see change before #EndPoverty day 2012? And how will you ‘be’ that change?

What I’d like to do is:

• Get Informed – Knowledge is Power. There are plenty of excellent online resources to help you get your facts straight. Visit The Poverty Site; The Scottish Poverty Information Unit; or Scottish Government pages for key ‘tackling poverty‘ and ‘Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation‘ statistics;
• Join Together – Our Unity is our Strength. Coming together with others who want to shape the same change as ourselves can be an empowering and life-affirming experience. Visit The Equality Trust; The Poverty Alliance; and the Scottish Campaign on Welfare Reform;
• Take Action – Every Action Counts. If I wait for the perfect time or the ideal action, I’ll probably do nothing. So long as each action leads towards a positive direction, it doesn’t matter if it’s a huge leap or a small step.

Mindful of the theme: “From Poverty to Sustainability: People at the Centre of Inclusive Development,” I will speak up wherever I can for Equality, for Inclusion, and for Sustainable Development which puts people first. Because the power is with we-the-people, and we-the-people is the point.

Great news today – our internship is now open for applications.  Thanks to Third Sector Internships Scotland (TSIS), SCVO and Queen Margaret Uni, we have an opportunity available to take on a current higher education student to carry out research into Edinburgh’s community transport sector. 

I see this a great chance for a student to get paid work experience, and do a useful piece of work for local charities at the same time.  EVOC is flexible about the working arrangements, and so I can imagine that the work pattern of the intern will be agreed with the successful applicant, to fit around their study/college schedule to suit them and us.

So click here for the background paperwork on the opportunity (opens as .pdf) – and do get in touch if you want more information.

After a year of planning and many months of hard work and more than a few wee delays, we are delighted to finally present the new EVOC website.

Tom and I have been the main team behind the new website, with Tom leading on IT and myself leading on content. It is never so simple though: these two areas overlapped constantly and we collaborated throughout. However I must shine a spotlight here on Tom with the very well-deserved credit that he was the one who kept it all moving forward and got us to the finish line. Thank you Tom – you are a star!

While Tom and I were the coordinators putting it together, the site belongs to all the people whose work and contributions built it:

• our developers Lukasz Piwko and Andy Pugh at Cloud Nine Creative. Lukasz nearly brought our website up the aisle with him when he got married last month (he was fixing code for us up to the last minute before heading out the door for his wedding trip!);
• our designer Michelle Goring of Sprocket Dog Design, whose bright colours and swooping swirls have brought smiles to our faces;
• our colleagues here at EVOC, who helped shape the site, provided me with information about their work, and endured photo shoots like troopers for those staff profile pages.

Yesterday afternoon we held a party and were joined by friends to celebrate the official launch of our site into cyberspace.  

Here is Ella kicking off the launch. Sorry for the glare in the photo: that’s the halo of Webmaster eminence shining off our Tom!

 

Board Member Joan Fraser cuts the ribbon and Tom hits the launch button.

 

Board Convener David Bennett applauds as the new site goes live.

 

Here’s me giving an ad hoc presentation of the site and its many exciting new features to everyone assembled. 

 

Guests included Mike Gilbert, Treasurer of the Board…

 

…and our web designer Michelle (far left).

 

And here’s Tom, tweaking things behind the scenes.

 

A fine time was had by all, and the new site was toasted with pink bubbly which went down a treat. Hello new EVOC website!!