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"Working Together
- Engaging Communities"
Left to Right – Debra
Alcock-Tyler, (Director of Social Change)
Jean Roberts-Jones, (Chief Executive Surrey Community
Action)
Sue Douthwaite (Cass Business School London)
Peter Grant, (Cass Business School London)
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Surrey
Community Action’s annual
conference at Royal Holloway College was a focal point for
over 120 voluntary and community organisations (VCOs) and
others involved with them to come together to hear well known
speakers addressing topical themes that affect all organisations
and groups both big and small alike.
The conference provided great
opportunities to network and share ideas and issues with
delegates from other organisations and sectors.
The 2007 theme – ‘Working Together: engaging
communities’ – focused on the role of the voluntary
and community sector (VCS) in delivering community engagement
as foreseen in the Government White Paper.
The morning keynote address and debate featured well
known speaker, Debra Alcock-Tyler (Director of Social Change)
who led a lively debate on ‘Its not the role of the
VCS to help government to promote civic engagement’,
which was convincingly defeated.
One of the conference
highlights was the Voluntary and Community Lecture, delivered
by well known writer and broadcaster Nick Cater. Nick’s
theme was “Why won’t someone just give us the
money and let us get on with it” where he challenged
voluntary organisations to look critically at where their
funding is coming from and how sustainable it is. He reminded
his audience that ‘it’s a tough world out there
with a lot of small organisations chasing a decreasing amount
of money – the successful organisations will be those
who work together to increase efficiency and effectiveness’.
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The
debate ‘It’s
not the role of the VCS to help government to promote
civic engagement’ was convincingly defeated,
again amid discussion on the need to have open, transparent
partnerships. Many people were interested in having
more information on how the sector can ‘share’ resources
to ensure best use is made of what we currently have.
Surrey Community Action will feedback on these requests
by the autumn.
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“Challenging speakers, interesting workshops, great
networking sums up many of the comments from the delegates” said
organiser Peter Smith, Head of Organisations at Surrey Community
Action. “Taking time out from a busy schedule is difficult
so we aim to ensure delegates find the day useful, informative
and hopefully enjoyable”.
This year’s conference
was supported by Linetex, Businesslink and Surrey County
Council.
The report of last
years conference is available here
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