To release the pressure we need a holiday

Rose, HVAs volunteer organiser won the lyric competition of a few posts back. Genuinely impressed that Rose could identify a fairly obscure Elvis Costello song (Everyday I write the book) from the 1983 Punch the Clock album. Or so I thought, until I was told that Rose had simply 'Googled' the lyric: an act a little similar to Ben Johnson's 100 meters in the Seoul Olympics methinks. Must be stricter about the rules in future!! Still Rose does have a good taste in music so is let off just with a yellow card this time.

Madonna sings us out of the blog for the next couple of weeks. A final flurry of activity to ensure that I have done everything I need to do, that others know what they need to do when I am away and those who do not know what they are doing in the first place are left well alone. Blogging activity is now curtailed until my return.

Anyway to see and hear Elvis Costello sing Everyday I write the book simply click on this link
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=QsxZjLVQraM

Blog Soon

S

The Birds Will Still Be Singing

I feel I should have introduced him earlier but HVA is probably the only CVS is the country with its own mascot. Basically, Leonard the Seagull (see picture on right side) was previously the mascot for a - now abandoned - Passport To Leisure resident discount scheme run by the Borough Council. Unfortunately a new administration combined with a series of budget cuts did for Leonard who was made redundant. Through the involvement of our volunteer bureau Leonard became a volunteer with Hastings United Football Club and leads out the team during home games. So grateful was Leonard for the volunteering opportunity given to him by Hastings Voluntary Action he agreed to become HVAs mascot as well. Commenting on his new position, Leonard said:- "If it wasn't for HVA I don't know where I would be. I was devastated when I lost my job with the Council and was at risk of descending into a vortex of daytime TV, crack addiction, meaningless one night stands and petty crime. I now feel I have regained my purpose in life and wake each day with a smile on my beak." Leonard is now working towards his Level 1 Certificate in Community Volunteering as part of HVAs Local Enterprise Growth Initiative (LEGI) programme.

Take it to the Top

have just e-mailed Kevin Curley Chief Executive of NAVCA (our national body) to get the message out to other CVS Directors about the blog and how it might be a strand of a more general information strategy for a CVS. If Kevin checks out the site he will also feel right at home to see himself mentioned and to know that seconds after sending an e-mail he can also feature in the blogging world.

And yes I am sad enough to remember the obscure 1981 New York disco hit which gives us our lyric reference. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fefrF9ngwOo

Consider Yourself Part of the Furniture

Another Service Level Agreement negotiated this time with the Hastings Furniture Service - a local charity recycling furniture and making it possible for those on low incomes to stretch their money when setting up home. I have a lot of time for the work they have done and it was nice that they have responded to an advert in Hastings Community News to seek funding to offer some accredited training to their volunteers via our LEGI programme. As a result volunteers can get their Health and Safety "ticket" which is an essential item if they want to work in related industries. We are also upping the amount who are appointed first aiders as part of this process. through this they can complete most of the entry stuff to then go onto the Certificate in Community Volunteering which we also offer. It is becoming clear to me that - in a Town where over 40% of the adult population have no formal qualifications - opening up some unusual yet relevant pathways to learning becomes ever more important. The link betwen volunteering and learning is proving a positive starting point and interest in the LEGI programme is growing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LzmdovYoAI

All your compliments and your cutting remarks are captured here in quotation marks

A special prize for the person who guesses the lyric! Anyway a lengthy interview took place with the Government researcher in which I was asked to review the Neighbourhood Renewal approach warts and all. In a nutshell there is quite a lot of positives I report including a greater resident involvement in service planning and exploring the nuances in different geographical areas which will need to be addressed in different ways. Data collection is more precise. On the negative side a bemoan the fact that a programme which was designed for the long term dwindled into another short term intervention with the same sustainability issues as all the others. I criticise the process for failing to resource neighbourhoods with resources from NRF to undertake their own mini-commissioning exercises to buy in those additiona,l services where and when they were most needed. On the community engagement side there is a mixed report some great ideas but a failure of delivery expressed in successive cuts to CEN funding and an elimination of the small grants process which made so much happen at a neighbourhood level. I speak about the importance of The Firm Foundations model as a basis for community activism and the attempts we have made to get others to adopt this as a fundamental principle to engender action at a neighbourhood level. I speak about the frustrations of hitting my head against that particular brick wall and the collective failure to understand the relationship between NRF and mainstream spending in such a way as to be precise. At the moment some core services are running towards the edge of a cliff without the slightest idea of what will happen next. On the LSP itself I explore the good the bad and ugly in terms of its performance - or otherwise - as the Towns strategic vehicle. At best there is a genuine will to form a partnership approach and at worst it is superficial and naive with political posturing and figure skating over the surface of complex and multi faceted issues. Not sure what difference submitting into these research studies is but maybe the message might eventually get through. Wasn't it Albert Einstein who said "if we knew what we wer doing it would not be called research would it!!"

Interview, who's interviewing who

A very old Carly Simon tune that one. Anyway today I am being interviewed as part of a research study for the Department of Communities and Local Government or whatever their called this week, It is a large research study about the effectiveness of the national strategy for neighbourhood renewal which is a programme tackling deprivation in the 88 worst areas in the country. I will blog my thoughts later when I know what questions they want to tackle. After that I have the joys of the LAA review group, a monitoring visit to a project delivering part of the LEGI programme as well as a lot of admin to go through. When I started this job I used to make myself a list of things to do the following day. I now make a list of which lists I should look at!!

The future's here catch me on computer software

A really really obscure lyric from Wu-Tang-Clan (80's rap band) gives us our theme and I have just spent an interesting 40 minutes or so being trained by our information worker on the use of the new database. Got to hand it to John who is bringing our management of information up to speed and enabling us to make sense of our contacts in a meaningful way. We have spent a lot of effort building a mass membership but this brings with it some information flow issues. We are developing an approach to build relationships with individuals within groups rather than just the groups themselves. This is useful because people tend to wear a number of hats in the VCS and understanding the range and scale of their involvement is key. Anyway I feel on top of the process - or at least sufficiently so to ask the right questions!!!

And in their most unadulterated form here are Wu-Tang-Clan (usual hip-hop/rap parental advisory sticker applies to this post by the way) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMkOEtOR2GU