And the winner is….

 

 

This month has seen the culmination of our project with the final judging of the Community Competition. 

Although we had only one entry in the end it was  still a well debated decision as the judging panel felt the group still had some way to go but were very impressed by the support the group had gathered for their project.  Moorsley Community Association have been named as winners with their project for a community facility to be used as a meeting place and venue for training, activities and events.  The group have managed to attract over thirty new volunteers for their project and have had interest from agencies such as Surestart and the Primary Care Trust to use their facility.

The challenge for the judging panel was to decide whether the group have demonstrated that their project would be sustainable and be used by people in Peat Carr and Moorsley, it was felt that the support they had gathered showed that people would use their project but that more serious consideration needed to be given as to how they would continue to generate revenue for the project and adhere to the many legalities of running a community venue.  With this in mind the panel decided that the group could be awarded an initial installment of the prize in order to put together a business plan and research what running costs they are likely to face as well as policies they may have to have in place.  The prospect of this could be daunting for any group so the panel have recommended Moorsley CA visit similar groups to share their experience and they will also be supported by ourselves and the local CVS at this stage.

When the group have secured their planning permission they will receive the next instalment of their prize which will allow them to get their facility on site and then finally kit it out, they will also have to hold a reserve which will cover their running costs for 2 years.  The role of the panel has been very important in helping set the group a valuable steer on how they can progress and we are very grateful to the panel for their expert knowledge and guidance. 

As always with this project there are challenges ahead for the group but they have been given such a massive boost from seeing a reward for their hard work and this will give them the motivation to make their idea a reality.  I feel through their experience of the project they have been able to get to grips more realistically with what their project entails but also get more in touch with the whole community which was more difficult before.

We are now organising a celebration event to be held in three weeks time which will recognise all of the achievements of the project and formally announce the winners, all of the community is invited and agencies who have helped along the way and we hope it will be a good opportunity for the group to spread the word more about their project and make useful connections that will help them on their way.  We also hope that it will act as a reminder for the community of what they have achieved and may inspire them to continue doing things for themselves.

Nearly there

Since our last post we have had to face the prospect of only one group submitting an entry for the final round of the Community Competition with our walk group dropping out and our toddler group heading the same way.  It was disappointing, however we can see that staging the competition works as it has enabled these groups to see that they are not yet in a position to realise their projects so although they will not enter the competition they have had a taste of what is involved in getting set up and hopefully in time they will feel more prepared to give it another go.

We have just two weeks to go now until the deadline for the application and our remaining group have been working hard to gather support for their project.  An event was held on 11th February and it was encouraging to see new faces coming along to those and three people prepared to volunteer with their project which demonstartes growing awareness and enthusiasm for their project.  The challenge has been to combat fatigue however, I felt that although the event was positive there is still more work to do so we met to work out how we could do this without it being too onerous for the group.  They are now undertaking door knocking with a few members volunteering to do this as they were given a boost by the success of the event.  They are informing local people about their project and getting their suggestions for activities so that there is a real opportunity for this project to be totally community led.  It’s going well and we’ve also put the group in touch with local agencies who also seem interested in getting involved.  Our youth worker has also surveyed young people about what they would like to do in the area and the group are already incorporating this into their bid.

Youth work has been one of the things we can be proud of this month too.  We have spent quite some time discussing the idea of the need for youth provision in the area and working with Gentoo, our partner and housing provider in the area and local youth services our youth worker has been able to agree an arrangement to hold a weekly drop in session at Gentoo’s bungalow- the Nidderdale Centre, before the project I don’t think this would have been thinkable but through our partnership working and increased knowledge of the area I think the confidence has built up to allow this.  Sessions will start in March and hopefully can lead to more projects for young people making a real difference in the area and helping people see that something can be done when they work together and that efforts are being made to improve things in Peat Carr and Moorsley.

Timing is everything

The new year has not started off too promisingly for the Neighbourhood Challenge as we are faced with the prospect of two projects possibly dropping out of the competition.  For one it is due to despondency, not through lack of trying the group cannot get people interested in their idea and are on the brink of giving up.  For our second group, despite three efforts to meet to discuss how to plan their trial run we have only managed to get one person to turn up and now we have had to come to the point where they seriously look at whether they will continue in the competition.  For both groups it seems to be a lot about timing.

For the second group, we believe that members seriously want to get their project off the ground, but in their own time, for individuals there are big life changes going on and this project has to take a lower priority, I also believe that because they have had the idea as a result of the competition rather than it being something they were naturally developing and then looking for funding for everything feels a bit rushed, particularly for a group who are not used to working in this way.  They need to be able to take their time to get used to thinking and working in a very different way.  If we look at the one remaining group in the competition their project is an idea they were already working on before the competition and so for them the timing is a little better although they still have hurdles to climb before the deadline.

For the first group again timing is a factor in their lack of success getting people involved, perhaps if their idea had come a year later, people in Peat Carr and Moorsley would be more prepared to get involved in a new project having experienced similar things in the area which can only be achieved with sustained activity that we have not been able to provide this year.  Over the last three years we have run various activities, some have been regular such as weekly growing activities and with each year the number of activities have increased but people in the area are not used to getting involved and will not engage, we think it will take many more years and more activities to finally persuade people that these things should not be met with suspicion.   

It is disheartening that despite all our efforts, attitudes still seem to be the same, that people are reluctant to do something new or to dare step out on their own but it has been less than a year trying to change these attitudes and it would be very optimistic to expect that we could reverse such long held beliefs in less than twelve months.

There is however a glimmer of hope in one of the unsuccessful competition entries, we met with the football coach and an interested parent earlier this month to talk about how coaching could still take place in the area.  The coach is still very keen to try coaching in Peat Carr and Moorsley and we have given him a seed fund to run a few more reduced rate tasters to try and get people along, we have also put him in touch with Gentoo and the Councils local newsletter who may be able to help promote the sessions.  It looks promising and hopefully in March/April something may start to happen there.

 

Going it alone?

This month we have met with two of the groups who will be competing in the second stage of the challenge prize and it has brought home just what a challenge it will be.  Working for Groundwork, developing projects and completing funding applications becomes second nature and it is easy to underestimate just what a shock it can be to groups who have little or no experience of this kind of process. 

We have aimed to make the application materials quite straightforward and questions minimal but it is clear that planning a taster in three months and also thinking about a project plan is quite a monumental task for the groups and this is more prevalent if group members are not sharing responsibility which we have identified could be a risk.  As with many community groups there are always the natural leaders who often take on many responsibilities and end up doing a lot of the work themselves or there are new groups where people are still unsure of their roles, with all of our projects this is the case and our main challenge will really be to stress how important it will be for sustainability that groups have support in developing and delivering their projects and share the work.

This comes with it’s difficulties as it is tempting to try and do a lot of the work for the groups to ease the pressure but ultimately this will hamper the potential sustainability of their projects as they will need to have the capacity and capability to run the activities the,selves in the long run.  As we have found throughout this project we need to keep a fine balance where we support enough to make sure the groups have thought about all eventualities but that we do not end up taking over.

This month we are proud however that local agencies have all shown willing and support to help the groups with information they will find vital in developing their projects and that we can be sure the groups have that cushion if they need it.

Competition hotting up

Planting trees on a blustery Saturday afternoon in Moorsley  Community Led walk in Peat Carr and Moorsley

This month has seen the competition really begin, with a final flurry at deadline time we received six applications in all for the £30,000 prize.  Applications ranged from values of £1500 to £30,000 for projects involving community gardens and a community resource to walking groups, toddler groups and football groups.

The judges met last Friday and three applications have made it through to our second stage where they will now be given a small seed fund to try their projects out and show in their application what they have learnt from the experience.  The groups will have until early March to try this out and get their Stage 2 applications in.  We hope that by doing this the winning group will be well prepared to start their project by April and will have the confidence to make it a long lasting project.

The judging process was interesting as all panel members had put a lot of consideration into the applications and how they met the criteria, there was a general consensus on all projects with very little disagreements.  I think preparation helped with this as we sent summaries of the applications out to panel members before the judging and asked members how they would score the individual criteria.  We also asked the panel members to highlight where they felt applicants needed to strengthen their submissions which should also help our groups greatly.

Over the last month I feel we have learnt a lot as we have discussed the NESTA event at our Action Grouop meeting and Action group members have met with Katherine from NCVO to discuss the project and having this time to reflect on the project we all agree that there are ways we could have worked differently, that having more of a presence in the area or having regular NESTA events on certain days would have helped establish the project more.  Over this month we have been holding more community events such as walks and tree planting which have been planned and organised with local people but we are still coming up against the same apathy from residents which our local action grouop members find hard to fathom too.  Perhaps the colder weather does play a part but with flyers delivered to doors and offers of free food and trees we still can’t attract people to events.  This is still our biggest challenge and one I think we will only overcome after years rather than months but there is a feeling that maybe once activities are fully run by local people within their community they have a better chance of succeeding as they have the time and determination to get people involved and are a constant presence in the area.

The main source of pride this month has been our Community Champions event which was a real boost for people involved in the Neighbourhood Challenge and local community, many of these champions are part of submissions to the Challenge Prize so hopefully the event will give them the impetus to see their projects through and unearth the next group of community champions. 

Although in the next month we may not have the challenge of organising events we will certainly face more and varied challenges in helping support our Stage 2 applicants as this will be quite an intensive process and knowing when to get involved and when to step back will be an important learning curve.

 

Celebrating our Community Champions

Last night was a really positive night for Peat Carr and Moorsley as we held our Community Champions Celebration evening.  The purpose of the event was to recognise the contribution made by local volunteers and make local people more aware of what they do and hopefully encourage more people to take their lead.  The Deputy Mayor and Mayoress of Sunderland attended to give out the awards and this really helped raise the profile of the area and those volunteers as Peat Carr and Moorsley is an area the Mayoral team have not visited before but were keen to return to.

We had 15 nominations for Community Champion awards and they attended with their friends and family, many were nervous and apprehensive about accepting their awards but ultimately at the end of the night we had a lot of proud people who were bouyed by the fact that there is value placed on what they do and that it does not go unnoticed.

We hope now that this encourages the Community Champions to continue with their hard work but will also inspire their friends and neighbours to have a go.

Lessons learnt

 

 

It’s a time of ups and downs at the moment with our Neighbourhood Challenge, it feels as though so much is going on, it’s hard to keep up but at the same time it feels like things are slowing down, we’ve got quite a few events being organised at the moment but time is running out for our competition entries and frustration is creeping in with poor attendance at our gardening Make A Change events and having to rearrange our other two again and again until we are left facing just one week until the application deadline.   

We’ve got two established project ideas now with a third and possibly fourth on the way but having attended the NESTA event last week we can’t help but feel envious of other projects who have something like 30 project ideas coming forward!

The event was very useful as it helped us see some ways that we could have done things differently but also reassured us that in some cases our approach may be effective, one of the issues we discussed with other groups was how to get new people involved in the project, we’re really happy to see people who are already involved in community activities stepping up but would like to see those people who are not regular faces at event planning meetings or manning the tombola stall too.  We were concerned how we could attract these people and felt it wasn’t something that was happening.  From the event we learnt from talking about other group experiences that when first launching the prize and asking people their interests we really needed to get people to ‘sign up’ there and then as we have found with our football application, gathering people with a similar interest together and supporting them to form a project can be effective because as we know people need a little push from us to take the step towards making an application.  It appeared this was the most successful approach for other groups and with hindsight this may have helped us attract more applications after our initial Make A Change events. 

Although it can at times feel disheartening that we have not been inundated with projects for the competition it is really encouraging to see the people who have put an application together who are now starting to feel really excited about the prospect of running their own project which is a real step forward and I think that our way of working with the groups to support them to put their applications together and bring in people with knowledge linked to their idea will pay big dividends if they are successful as they will have really thought the project through.

Next month will be a busy one with community led events taking place such as walks, tree planting and a litter pick, our last two Make A Change events which have had to be frustratingly rescheduled, a Community Champions awards evening, celebrating the contribution of volunteers in Peat Carr and Moorsley and first stage judging of the applications.  Ideally these activities would have been more spread out over the year to again try and encourage people to come forward, however they are probably coming at the right time to help keep momentum going after the competition deadline as the groups will need support from an engaged and inspired community to turn their projects into reality.

Rising to the challenge

In the last couple of weeks we’ve seen the Challenge Prize start to take off and already we have a couple of groups who have grasped the idea of taking something on themselves with both hands which has been really encouraging to see.  Just from our initial meetings we can see people are already thinking about how their project will run, how they will involve people and how they will sustain it in the long term.  The range of projects is also interesting, apotential community garden with a school, a junior football team where the young people have shown great awareness of what is involved to make it a success and have shown fantastic commitment towards it and a Toddler group led by local Mums where the group are already thinking about things such as ground rules and how they will get more people involved.

We are now in the process of supporting these groups with further Make A Change events where they can get more information and support to develop their ideas.

The most challenging part about this phase is making sure that the groups are confident enough to develop the projects, particularly with the junior football team we hope that the young people’s enthusiasm will be matched by parents and adults who can help them make the idea a reality.  We always believed that we would get some good ideas but that groups would need a little push to make the first step and so another challenge has been to engage with those groups and help them get to that point, such as organising a football taster and us directly contacting the groups to meet and discuss their ideas.

I think another challenge that may happen is to keep momentum going, talking to some groups, again particularly the young people they would like to see the project start tomorrow and we need to help manage expectation and help them understand the process they will need to go through, however we hope that in the mean time the idea of a seed fund for the groups to try things out such as a visit to a football training centre will help keep the young people interested and not lose motivation with the timescales we have for the competition prize.

One surprising thing so far has been the young people’s response to the football idea, working with youth workers some young people said they weren’t too bothered by football and wanted a bike park but following the football Make A Difference event there attitude changed completely and having a football team in a league was more important to them and their passion for this really shone through, we just hope they can sustain this.  The idea of a bike park may still be out there amongst other young people but that will be a challenge as it is not something that is supported by the local council so we need to get our thinking caps on for a good solution.

The last couple of weeks have really shown us that there is a lot of potential in Peat Carr and Moorsley and that people are willing to do something for themselves, the key is to make sure they have support to do so. 

How can we ‘Make a Change’?

 

This month has seen us holding four ‘Make A Change’ events in Peat Carr and Moorsley, which were held on Wednesdays and Saturdays and had themes of Healthy Living, Play and Games, Nature and Heritage and Arts and Crafts.  The idea behind the events was to provide local people with ideas for their own projects but also show them what support is available to them if they did want to develop an idea, so for example we had taster sessions from Sunderland Council’s Community, Adult and Family Learning service, coaching from a  local football coach, the Council’s Walking Co-ordinator and Get Active Co-ordinators also provided information on local services and volunteer schemes.

We were also helped by volunteers on our Action Group who ran activities and helped promote the activities but we still found with the events that although they were publicised in the local newsletter and on flyers we delivered to every door about the challenge prize we still struggled to get big attendances, particularly from adults.  We had a good number of young people popping in to our marquee set up for the events but had to advise that to get a project off the ground they would need the support of adults and we see this as one of our bigger challenges facing us over the next couple of months.  There seems to be a will to see change in the area particularly for young people and from young people but they need the support of their families.

There were some positive outcomes from our events and these have helped us shape the next phase of the project.  We now have a group of young mothers in Peat Carr who would like to establish an activity group for children in the area and we will shortly be meeting with them to talk through their project- this is just the kind of project that the Challenge Prize is looking for and hopefully we will be able to support them with some seed feed funding to try and get their idea established.  We also met a number of parents and grandparents at the events who would like to see a skatepark or bike track for their children and this was supported by a number of young people attending the events who also said they would like to see one.  Groundwork have just started a youth project in Peat Carr and Moorsley with two detached youth workers and we are very hopeful that working with the youth worker we can encourage parents to support their children to put together a project proposal for a facility.

Following the events we now hope to launch four more Make A Change events focussing on specific project ideas so we are hoping to arrange a meeting with Surestart staff who can give advice on establishing a toddler/play group, we are also hoping to offer a football coaching taster session with a local social enterprise who are looking to establish activity in Peat Carr and Moorsley.  The PCT have also approached us to help them deliver a free Healthy Eating course, however we are struggling again to get people interested in the course.

As we have seen theough our launch and again at these events, people have ideas but perhaps not the confidence to kick start something and so hopefully the more focussed Make A Change Events will give people the skills and knowledge to take the next step, we know this is a major challenge as it involves changing long standing attitudes.  On many occassions at our events we heard the phrase “You should do…” and we have to work now to help people change that to “We should…”.

How much support is too much?

Think we’ve just sorted out the last of our blogging issues here in the North East so let’s hope this is us back on track with our blog!

It’s a really exciting and nerve-wracking time for us here at the moment as we officially ‘launched’ our challenge prize at the weekend.  We opted to launch it as part of a local event ‘ Moorsley Fun Day’ as well mailing out to every house in the area with our official challenge prize leaflet.  After all the planning work we’ve been doing behind the scenes it felt really great to finally be able to tell people what the ‘community competition’ is all about.

We’ve decided to include an initial ‘seed feed’ phase within our project where we’ll give local people small amounts of funding to set up local groups.  This is essential to the success of our project as there is so little organised community activity currently taking place in the area and we are keen to ensure that: 1. We have an active and involved community ready to take forward/ use the projects that come out of the challenge prize and 2. That we create as many confident and enthusiastic groups as possible to maximise the amount of challenge prize entries. 

Our big dilemma at the moment is just how much support to give people in initially setting up these groups.  Lots of local people are clearly very interested and have suggested things such as knitting groups, cycling groups and walking groups, we’ve contacted them to let them know the next steps in bringing a group together and offering them support.  The more confident members of the community are gearing up to make these groups happen and we’re helping them to do so.  However, we know that there are lots of others who are really interested but probably won’t ever have the confidence to lead these groups themselves, or to make the next steps – question is do we initially ‘do it for them’?  Do we go ahead and set up initial meetings of ‘local groups’ to bring people together and say- “look at this,  all you people want to be in a knitting group, let’s make it happen”, or, by taking the lead initially, will we find it difficult to ever hand over to the community members themselves and are we creating a community that’s too reliant on outside support?  We’ll keep you updated as to how these new groups take shape over the coming months and we’d love to hear from anyone facing similar dilemmas.