Author: Community Transport Association Scotland

Since its inception, the Scotland-wide Free Travel Scheme has been a welcome boon for many of Scotland’s older citizens. It has brought people together, given them greater independence and transformed the opportunities available to them.

The 12 organisations behind the A Fare Deal Campaign have supported the scheme since its inception, and we continue to do so. However, the benefits it has brought are not equally available to all of Scotland’s older and disabled people.

At present, many of the most frail and vulnerable people entitled to free travel cannot use their entitlement because they are unable to access conventional bus services. They may be too frail or disabled, blind or partially sighted to get to a bus, or may live in an area where bus services are sparse or non-existent. Instead, they can use Demand Responsive Community Transport Services, such as Dial-A-Ride or Ring-A-Bus, often at a cost to themselves, to travel around. This serves as a disincentive against ‘nonessential’ trips such as social occasions and adds a financial burden to ‘essential’ trips such as hospital appointments.

Many local authority operated demand responsive community transport schemes are delivered free to people who hold the entitlement card, but a significant number levy a fare. We believe that there should be equity across Scotland so that people who hold an entitlement card under the free travel scheme can access their local authority operated transport schemes for free no matter in which of Scotland’s 32 local authorities they live.

Many local community transport schemes are operated by voluntary organisations who have found themselves vulnerable with their current funding running out in March 2009. These voluntary schemes also often have to charge to keep their schemes running. We believe that the community transport schemes should be a part of the free travel scheme.

To address this inequality, we believe that the Scotland-wide Free Travel Scheme should be extended to cover Demand Responsive Community Transport and we need your and your friends’, families’ and neighbours’ support to help make the case to the Scottish Government.

Why Extend the Scheme?
The Scotland-wide Free Travel Scheme recognises the importance of both ‘essential’ and ‘non-essential’ journeys to the well-being, health, social inclusion and social activities of older and disabled people. Indeed, this forms a large part of the rationale behind the scheme. For example, two of the scheme’s key objectives explicitly state that it is to:

• “Allow older and disabled people (especially those on low incomes) improved access to services, facilities and social networks by ‘free’ scheduled bus services; and so promote social inclusion”
• “To improve health by promoting a more active lifestyle for the elderly and disabled”

As these important objectives apply to all older and disabled people, there can be no justification for excluding those who, for whatever reason, cannot use scheduled bus services.

The Scottish Executive’s “Review of Demand Responsive
Transport (DRT) in Scotland (2006)” highlighted this inequity. In addition, a 2006 Report from the Scottish Parliament Equal Opportunities Committee recommended that “the Scottish Executive make current and future DRT services eligible for concessionary fares in line with the concessionary fares scheme introduced in April 2006”.

In addition to establishing equality for all of Scotland’s older and disabled people, extending the scheme would help towards achieving the Scottish Government’s five Strategic Objectives and other aspects of the National Performance Framework. In particular it would help meet the National Outcomes of:

• “living longer, healthier lives” –
• “tackling the significant inequalities in Scottish society”; and
• “living in well-designed, sustainable places were we are able to access the amenities and services we need”. Community transport enables people who experience social exclusion to sustain and improve their health and gives them better and faster access to health care. Having good, reliable, accessible transport also enables people to live independently for longer, reducing the burden on care in the community and residential care budgets.

How much would this cost?
A survey conducted by the Community Transport Association (CTA) in July 2007 showed that community transport (which does not include all forms of DRT) provided 2.6 million passenger journeys in Scotland the previous year, i.e. 1.3 million return journeys. CTA estimate that these journeys would have been made by around 100,000 passengers. Return fares on community transport services in Scotland average around £4. Given this, the cost of extending the scheme in 2007 would have been £5.2m.

This would be the cost to government if all community transport services, including dial-a-ride, dial-a-bus, and car schemes, were included in the free travel scheme. Even allowing for a degree of variance in future and the additional journeys from people who currently cannot afford to make non-essential trips, the cost of extending the scheme would not therefore be prohibitive to the public purse.

Research carried out by Leonard Cheshire Scotland has shown that 32% of people with disabilities who had a scheduled medical appointment in the last 12 months had missed it due to lack of accessible transport. A missed appointment results in a significant cost to the NHS and a conservative estimate shows that over half a million hospital appointments were missed in Scotland at a cost of £50.7 million. Extending the Free Travel Scheme to include demand responsive community transport could therefore lead to substantial savings to the NHS.

Set against this, as many as 100,000 people who are currently entitled to free bus travel will be able to use their concession to access the services and opportunities they require through demand responsive community transport services. They will benefit socially and financially and there could be significant savings to the public purse.

Civil Society in Scotland Conference. 18th Feb

Outline concept

Aims:
• To bring together different parts of civil society together to explore specific challenges and the role of civil society in tackling/ addressing them
• To connect together what is already happening on the ground to face the multiple crises affecting our society
• To establish where/ whether we have a shared set of core messages to offer to the challenges our society faces within the overarching principles of sustainable development, good governance and sound science.

This conference should be seen as a staging post along the process of developing a shared civil society response to these crises.

Whose event?

• This should be a joint event owned by all those in civil society that seek a shared identity in responding to the current crises. This would involve civil society in its widest form from local community champions/activists all the way to large formal organisations.
• Given civil society’s diversity and to provide an overarching cohesion, the conference is being organised by “institutional” civil society (i.e. large formal organisations or networks), as they can offer the resources or leverage to do so.
• The organisers of the conference comprise a Planning group of institutional partners from across civil society, building on the Civil Society Roundtable hosted by SCVO in June 2009.
• Beyond the planning group, the conference publicity literature would be branded with the logos of as wide a range of civil society networks and organisations as practical, thereby enlisting their support in reaching deep into active civil society.

When: At the first planning meeting, it was agreed to hold the event at the Gathering 2010 (18th February, Edinburgh International Conference Centre), an annual voluntary sector collection of conferences, seminars and exhibitions but which also has attendance from trade unions, co-operatives, and wider civil society. Footfall has included the wider general public – on average 4000 to 5000 people have attended each Gathering event between 2004 and 2007.

Audience: target of roughly 200 participants could include trade unions activists, leading members of co-operatives, church leaders, non-church faith groups, leading academics, representatives of professional associations, social entrepreneurs, voluntary sector movements, journalists, trusts/foundations and community champions.

Speakers – leading experts on these topics, who will hopefully come from different parts of civil society. We would not seek public sector officials or government ministers to address this event.

Chair – A leading respected figure in Scottish civil society, based on his/her contribution to society rather than position.

Suggested approach:

• Advance briefing to delegates
• Introduction/ context setting keynote speech
• Speeches could be on the broad concerns of: Poverty and economic democracy (UK and global), Equalities and Human Rights, Climate Change
• Discussion groups on these topics to follow speeches, looking at where/ whether we have a shared agenda. Carefully selected facilitators invited from a cross-section of civil society
• Facilitators of the discussion groups feedback main points from their discussions
• Plenary discussion on our role as civil society partners in dealing with the challenges identified, and ideas for moving forward on the issues.
• Networking – wine and nibbles.

Current institutional partners
STUC
Church and Society Council
Local People Leading
Carnegie UK
Faith in Community Scotland
Scottish Interfaith Council
Senscot – Social entrepreneurs network
SCVO (playing a secretariat role)
Royal Society of Edinburgh (To be Confirmed)
Co-operation and Mutuality Scotland

Feedback on application process
Big Lottery Fund Scotland
03.12.09

The Big Lottery Fund Scotland office  is currently working hard to develop a range of new funding opportunities, which we will launch next year.

We’ve already heard the message that our stakeholders want us to give clear decisions early in the process so that we can reduce the number of unsuccessful applicants, but we also know that sometimes we haven’t made ourselves clear about what we need to hear from applicants during the application process.

With this in mind, we’d like to hear people’s feedback on the application materials we used last time around, and our application processes in general.  We want to hear peoples thoughts on:
– What were the strengths of the way BIG works compared to other funders?
– What best practice can we copy from elsewhere?
– In terms of our application form, were there any questions which were unclear, or any parts where we could improve our guidance?
– What sort of questions would help us to understand your project better?
– Which questions didn’t help you communicate your project to us?

Respond to the survey here http://www.bigblog.org.uk/

A blog from Copenhagen – Justin Henrick
Climate Change — talks and walks

Saturday 12th December — On the Huge Climate Action March

A fantastic day of civil society taking action on the streets.

I’m too tired to do anything more than paste in here a report I have just sent to the BBC’s Radio 5 Live show who want to interview me tonight …

I came over to Copenhagen on the ferry from Harwich on Thursday, and head back to the UK tomorrow night by a 24 hour coach ride. I am part of the Transition Town movement in the UK (www.transtionculture.org).

I came, like thousands from the UK, because we don’t believe the politicians understand the seriousness of what is happening. So today 100,000 of us from all over the world marched the 6km from Parliament Square to the Bella Centre where Ministers are working out what they will let the world do to limit the damage from climate chaos.

99,500 people on the march were cheerful and colourful (the other few hundred were young kids of the Black Bloc who — after two of them broke some windows — seemed destined to end up being the playthings of the Danish police and their new ‘Rascal law’ giving them powers they needed to prove they deserved). The rest of us danced to samba bands, brass bands, walked alongside floats, under flags and banners, as penguins, as polar bears (well, you know, they have to find somewhere). The colourful tens of thousands carried placards saying ‘Politicians only talk, Leaders lead’, ‘There is No Planet B’ and ‘System Change not Climate Change’. At the end an indigenous leader from the Americas said — to roars of agreement — that the real solution is not the climate market; the real solution is simply to leave the coal and oil and gas in the ground, and not to try and make a quick fix with poisonous nuclear. Before, on the march, he and all the indigenous peoples had been singing ‘The Climate Market is a Big Lie’.

The fear is that the politicians will negotiate a deal where the North just carries on with planet-wrecking business as usual, and pays some money to the politicians of the Global South in exchange for them saying they’ll protect their forests to keep absorbing some of the CO2 — meanwhile carbon levels will keep on rocketing, the arctic melting, forests burning and permafrost melt will increasingly release methane. The fear is that they’ll make it look like a great deal, but it could be just like the G8 meeting in Gleneagles in 2005 when Bob Geldorf and the Make Poverty History campaign got the Governments to promise they’d end poverty in Africa, and then things just got worse.

Strangely enough, we’re here because these meetings of these politicians do nothing. They just seem to rubber stamp the system that has brought us starvation at one end of the world and obesity at the other, brought us cheap flights to sunny destinations which will soon be too sunny to fly to any more. That’s why the most popular placards at today’s march were ‘System Change not Climate Change’ and ‘Our Climate — Not your Business’.

Friday 11th December — In the UNCCC Bella Centre

Today I was at the side events at the UNCCC Climate talks in the Bella Centre, Copenhagen. I was here to meet up with people I’ll be working with to support forest peoples’ communities in Cameroun to resist and redirect the World Bank’s climate change ‘solutions’. Solutions which are probably no solution at all but will appropriate local peoples’ forests, lead to rapid deforestation, and be used to justify emissions in the Global North through appearing to protect (while actually destroying) the forests of the Global South. Welcome to the UN’s REDDS mechanism (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation in the Global South) — a great idea if controlled by local people and if it isn’t an excuse for inaction in the Global North, but a crazy idea in the hands of the powers that be. Sounds familiar?

There has just been an amazing event at the end of the day: CAN (the Climate Action Network) has just awarded the day’s highly prized ‘Fossil Fool Award’. Under bright lights, with a huge fanfare, speeches, and a huge crowd, the prize was awarded to Canada for being the most obstructive nation at the talks today. Amazingly the Winning Trophy was received by the Mayor of Toronto who is here with a 100 other Mayors from across the world.

The Mayor stood with the trophy on the podium, holding it in front of his face. He said he was proud of what Canadians and cities throughout Canada are doing in response to climate change, but he was receiving the prize because he was ashamed of the Canadian government’s stance. The occasion ended with a glitzy singer singing a song as if from Canada: “We’ll keep extracting from the tar sands until [PM] Harper is gone”. Huge applause, huge appreciation of the no-nonsense, and yet strange to be with such a huge crowd laughing so hard, clapping so loudly, and aware that this is so deadly serious.

Meanwhile, in the inter-governmental negotiations the REDDS initiative is being rapidly watered down. They’ll work through the night on this one, but as things stand there are no targets, the language doesn’t guarantee indigenous and local peoples free, prior and informed consent, and the argument is over questions of finance rather than democracy and climate safety. Sounds as though it is going the way of the whole conference: distant targets instead of present action, more techno-fixes instead of just solutions. On techno-fixes see the Declaration ‘Let’s look before we leap!’

Strangely, at the session on REDDS in the Congo Basin (which was mostly a combination of pedantic obfuscation and entertaining story telling from African Government Ministers), the Kenyan Green Belt movement Nobel Laureate Wangari Maathai spoke briefly at the end of the need for African unity and drew laughter when she said we had to get the rich nations to “open their wallets” to save the Congo rainforest. I couldn’t help thinking how unlikely it would be that that finance would serve local people, rather than further enrich the rich. Stranger still (or maybe not) were the two Danish conference security guards who forced people who were standing to leave the packed room (presumably on the pretext of health and safety). They hadn’t done this at any other session. Some of us got up to give people from Africa our seats, and some of us then sat on the floor. When asked to move, I refused. Others came and sat down too instead of leaving, one European woman asking “Am I allowed to stay?”, to which I replied “If you insist on staying, they won’t move you”, Reassured by this self-fulfilling statement, she stayed. But it’s only self-fulfilling if enough selves fulfill it — a metaphor for the collective action needed to replace the inevitable with the impossible?!

In contrast to the Congo Forest session (and to an earlier session on the Convention on Biological Diversity which couldn’t see the people for the science and the finance), a session on the Amazon and REDDS run by indigenous people was full of people and peoples stories. Many of the indigenous representatives were only newly elected to their representative positions and so seemed to know little about the climate issues. They were, understandably, more concerned with the immediate effects of violence against their peoples (in Peru) and with the impact of extractive industries (everywhere).  At the start of the session a Minister from  Columbia (I think, though possibly it was Ecuador)  spoke clearly and passionately about how her Government had changed it’s view of REDDS to place local peoples needs and wishes centre stage. She couldn’t stay for the rest fo the session because she was needed in the main REDDS negotiations to battle against the watering down of democracy and ecology in favour of finance and prevarication.

Before finding a place to tap this out and then head for the alternative summit or Klimaforum, I met someone from Scotland who recently helped initiate a Transition initiative there (here?!), and who also works with communities in Africa. He thought they were operating in completely different worlds — but talking with colleagues from Cameroun we weren’t so sure. We reckoned that recovering community ownership, action and effectiveness in the Global North is as vital as protecting existing communities and shared ownership in the Global South.

Instead of heading to the alternative Klimaforum summit, I went to the alternative alternative summit in what felt like a police no-go alternative collective: Christiania. It used to be a military fort and was turned into a huge squat that covers blocks and blocks. Here the summit was a huge circus tent with good cheap food, conversations, and a discussion focused on how people can make lives and communities that are not driving consumption and catastrophe. The whole place mingled threads of chaos, conversation and laughter — not so different, then, to the so-called main event back at the Bella Centre.

You can keep track of what is happening at the negotiations through Climate Action Networks’ daily bulletins.

An electric car which will be used for community transport in the Cairngorms National Park has been unveiled.
 
Badenoch and Strathspey Community Transport Company will use it to take people with limited access to transport to doctor’s appointments and shopping.

The car, which can tow its own wind turbine, was launched as a Highland Council-commissioned report forecasted a decline in filling stations.

The current number of 231 sites is expected to fall to 117 in 10 years.

CNPA said its electric vehicle could reach speeds of 70mph and has a range of 100 miles.

It takes about 10 hours to recharge and can tow a small wind turbine on a trailer for charging in remoter areas.

Outdoor charging points have been installed in Aviemore and Grantown-on-Spey and plugs will also be fitted to the homes of the community company’s volunteers.

Drivers have been given special training because the car makes half the engine noise of a petrol or diesel fuelled car and added caution will be needed when driving near pedestrians and cyclists.
 
David Green, convener of the CNPA, said the car was part of efforts by the park authority to tackle climate change.

He said: “This is a very exciting project for everyone involved.
“Testing of electric vehicles hasn’t really happened outside of cities so I think what we are doing here is innovative and really quite brave.”
 
Maggie Lawson, of Badenoch and Strathspey Community Transport Company, added: “Our volunteers are delighted to be testing the car in our rural environment and very excited to be part of a project which is working towards reducing our carbon footprint.”

Cheap fuel

The car is a joint initiative between CNPA and Perth College UHI with support from the Highland Regional Transport Partnership, Community Energy Scotland, Climate Challenge Fund and local schools and colleges.
 
The project has been welcomed by the Scottish government.

Meanwhile, a study commissioned by Highland Council has forecast a reduction in filling stations in the Highlands and Islands over the next eight to 10 years.
 
However, consultants Experian said motorists would still have access to fuel within a 15 minutes drive of their homes. People in remoter areas would have further to travel.
 
The study suggested drivers were more concerned about getting cheap fuel than the demise of stations.
 
Researchers also reported supermarkets were “soaking up” customers and younger members of family-owned businesses were reluctant to take over the concerns because of the long hours and low profitability.

WRVS campaign to extend transport services :  http://www.giveusalift.org.uk

Development Trust offers hope to Old Town residents
 
The newly established Edinburgh Old Town Development Trust which is also to cover the Dumbiedykes community, held its first public meeting on Thursday 26th November at Augustine United Church, George IV Bridge

The trust has been formed by members of the Save Our Old Town campaign, who fought long and hard against the controversial plans by Mountgrange to develop the Caltongate.

The meeting included discussion on the trusts possible projects and Ian Cooke, Director of The Development Trusts Association Scotland gave an introduction to the fast growing network of development trusts across Scotland, highlighting the real differences they are making to the communities in which they are based.

Sean Bradley, a director of the trust and Chair of the Grassmarket Residents’ Association said today  “A community’s greatest asset is its residents. The Edinburgh Old Town Development Trust is an historic opportunity for the people of the Old Town to shape its future for the benefit of all – that means improving opportunities and the quality of life for everyone”

Catriona Grant another local resident and fellow director adds  “Last year’s community research, The Canongate Project , showed that more support and facilities are needed for the residential population if a ‘living city’ is to be maintained in the Old Town. The research also highlighted the need for affordable housing, family sized homes, a better mix of local shops, community facilities, play space, public toilets, safe and usable green public space, along with residents having a say in future developments in the Old Town.”

Catriona ends “So we are urging those who live in the area and outwith to come along and become a member of the trust. Help shape the future projects and the role the trust can play in an area which is becoming increasingly dominated by tourism and the night-time economy often at the expense of those who call it home.

The trust is hoping to follow the success of similar organisations in England, which have transformed high-profile public spaces into thriving community areas.

Ideas include the possible creation of an indoor food market, similar to ones held in Barcelona London’s famous Borough market, which they say would be popular with tourists and would also provide a much-needed service for local residents.

They are also hoping to come up with plans to create affordable housing in the area, with the former NCP car park site one possible location.

And a Green Spaces Project inspired by the work of Patrick Geddes will aim to get everyone in the area working to create community gardens.

Community owned enterprises in England will benefit from an exciting new government-backed initiative which aims to stimulate investment through community share and bond issues.

Community investment is different. Instead of turning to the private sector and wealthy individuals for support, community investment is about engaging communities to invest in themselves.

By harnessing the collective investment powers of whole communities, large amounts of capital can be raised in small sums from members of the community.

Be it a small village shop or large scale housing development, a community recycling project or major renewable energy scheme, they all have one thing in common – actively committed and motivated members who recognise the wider benefits of communities investing and engaging in their own solutions.

Also see, http://www.communityshares.org.uk/news/round-two-successful-projects-announced

Community controlled housing associations have been one of Scotland’s housing and regeneration success stories in the last four decades.
 
The Glasgow and West of Scotland Forum of Housing Associations, EVH and SHARE have come together to look at how they respond to the many challenges facing the sector, including housing cooperatives, community controlled and community based housing associations in Scotland.
 
The Scottish Housing Regulator’s recent pronouncements in their publication “Shaping up for Improvement” appear confused and lack clarity. You could interpret their emphasis on criticizing the abilities of local committee members, the need to consider mergers and the need for greater efficiency to be a direct attack on this model. However it also says that there are excellent community controlled housing associations.
 
The Draft of the forthcoming Housing Scotland Bill appeared more interested in bringing forward new private sector models for provision and management than in promoting the existing successful Scottish community-based  model. By comparison it would appear that down south they are now rediscovering the benefits of community empowerment, and community well-being as objectives of housing and regeneration policy and regulation.
 
Faced with these development s combined with the proposed massive reduction in public spending for new Housing in 2010 and the apparent policy vacuum at a strategic level ever since the demise of Communities Scotland, we have jointly agreed that there must be a robust policy response from all three organisations.
 
As a result we have agreed to work closely together and with others, including Local People Leading, to jointly promote the interests of community controlled housing organisations. We will defend and promote the principles of community housing in Scotland which include:-

• The retention and promotion of local control and involvement in strategic and significant decisions affecting local communities
• The importance of owning local assets and revenue generation in relation to financial sustainability and genuine community empowerment
• The ability to appoint and direct local staff in the interests of the local community
• The ability to make decisions and work outwith the confines of a strict housing role to create popular, successful and sustainable local communities

Our joint work will involve as a first step sharing information and meeting regularly to discuss and respond to the key issues we all believe can support the community controlled housing sector. It is our aim that it should not only continue to provide high quality housing services that are accountable to and controlled by local communities, but can also play an important and growing role in helping Scotland recover from the current economic crisis.

EVH and SHARE have members who are not community controlled and nothing in this agreement will be to the detriment of service to them but merely reflects the current environment.

It is useful to think of our modern mixed economy as comprising 3 systems; the first, private and profit driven; the second, for the planned provision of public services; and the third, citizen driven – working for the common good.  This third system or sector is really a disparate collection of sub sectors with their own histories and cultures – but all with an identifiable common purpose to work for social justice.

    To engage seriously with the Govt, the private sector and the wider public – the third sector needs a representative body, so that when necessary it can speak with a single voice. The primary task of this body is the development and promotion of third sector policy – involving a continuous dialogue with member organisations as they adapt to changes in wider society.
   
    This short paper comes out of the view that the present arrangements have lost touch with and cannot legitimately represent large areas of third sector activity; and that a wide consultation is now required in Scotland to agree a more effective framework. There are strong opinions that new arrangements should involve only policy and representation – that the market for training and support services is more appropriately the domain of member organisations.
   
    Across the third sector there are dozens of thematic and functional sub-divisions – but they would all identify with the culture of one or more of its three main branches – the social enterprise, the community or the voluntary sub-sectors.   
   
Perhaps some kind of federal representative structure would allow both sub sectoral diversity and the uniformity required to give common force to our different interests.

    The issue of representation is given immediacy by Scottish Govt’s new requirement that the third sector at local authority level organises to speak with a single voice.  It is Senscot’s position that any such ‘single interface’ would be meaningless unless it incorporates these three separate perspectives.

The Community Sector

DEFINITION: The community sector is the web of local groups, networks and traditions that exist amongst those who share defined neighbourhoods.  Its activities – predominately small scale – are led by and accountable to local people and are the main source of social capital in our communities.

HISTORY/ETHOS: The community sector has its roots in direct action by ordinary citizens to have greater control over their lives – challenging injustice – promoting new ways of doing things.  It uses the language of empowerment, activism and local democracy – often with an explicitly political edge.

REPRESENTATIVE BODY: The community sector needs to agree a national structure embedded in communities and led by local people.  This new body needs to proclaim its authority and independence from the state and academe.

GOING FORWARD: The community sector is probably the largest but least organised of the third sector’s three branches.  Scottish Govt. needs to co-ordinate a specific development strategy with budgets.

The Social Enterprise Sector

DEFINITION: Social enterprises are commercially run, profit making organisations – driven by social aims – whose profits are reinvested into their social mission.  Many organisations which operate as social enterprises don’t always refer to themselves as such.

HISTORY/ETHOS: The social enterprise movement has only emerged within the last 10 years – fuelled by the third sector’s need for sustainable, independent income and by the enthusiastic promotion of the state.  Its language and ethos are a mix of business and voluntary/community cultures.

REPRESENTATIVE BODY: There has been bold govt. investment in an effective support infrastructure – but some intermediaries tend to trip over each other (eg. Senscot and Coalition).  Some consolidation is needed for unified representation. 

GOING FORWARD: The state’s enthusiasm is partly about co-option into service delivery.  This raises issues about social enterprise becoming a construct of govt. and its long term independence.

The Voluntary Sector

DEFINITION: The voluntary sector is often used as a generic term synonymous with the social economy – third sector etc.  It is used here to mean the traditional charities which make up the bulk of the organised third sector.

HISTORY/ETHOS: The history of our voluntary sector mirrors the development of social policy across the whole spectrum of human need.  The ethos is moving away from the condescension of charity, towards co-production and more empowering ways of engaging with individuals who need help.

REPRESENTATIVE BODY: The voluntary sector includes some massive charities – battalions – with very different needs from the platoons.  Is it realistic for one organisation to represent the whole spectrum?  The new organisation, VAS, provides the opportunity for voluntary sector infrastructure to get alongside community and social enterprise representatives nationally and at local level.  Three branches in partnership.

GOING FORWARD: The emphasis on social enterprise has given rise to the myth that the third sectors main mission – the achievement of social justice – can be self financing.  It can’t.  Self financing services for the needy will always be the exception.

A COMMUNITY centre in the east end is celebrating after a £200,000 makeover.

TV star Tam Cowan joined tenants of Provanhall Housing Association to unveil a new mosaic at ‘The Connie’ – a 5,000 sq ft youth club and sports facility on Conisborough Road created out of derelict shop units.

Provanhall resident Eleanor McLaughlin, along with 10 other committed locals, has been volunteering for several months at The Connie – assisting with the set up and organisation and running activities. Today she takes up her new post as Support Worker.

She said: “Everyone is so excited about the new centre and what it will mean for them.

“The kids have never had a purpose-built place where they can spend time doing dancing, drama, sports and IT activities.

“We would never have been able to have done this without all the hard work of Provanhall Housing Association and funding from the Scottish Government, the city council, The Moffat Trust and GHA – everyone is really excited about calling The Connie their own.”

Speaking at the opening, Tam Cowan added: “The kids and volunteers in Provanhall have, with the help of Provanhall Housing Association and many others, turned a derelict and vandalised building into a fresh, bright shared place from which the whole neighbourhood can benefit.

“It’s a shining example to other areas – working together can have a real, positive impact on people’s lives.”

Patricia Gallagher, director of Provanhall Housing Association, added: “The newly established Provanhall Community Trust alongside Wellhouse Community Trust have been working closely with local young people for several months to create a central social facility in a safe environment which not only serves their needs but can also be used for other groups and activities to benefit the whole community.”

As well as the main hall, the new centre also boasts a learning suite.

Visitors at the opening ceremony were treated to special performances from dance groups who practise at The Connie and a special drama performance. The commemorative mosaic was designed by local youngsters as part of the youth club arts project.