Author: Scottish Farm Land Trust

Crowdfunder page

Help us reach our target of £10,000 which will allow us to employ a Development Worker to progress our innovative idea to increase access to land for agro-ecological farmers in Scotland!  To find out more, read on…

The Scottish Farm Land Trust aims to increase access to land for small-scale, ecological agriculture.

We’ll do this by acquiring land to be held in trust and rented fairly to new entrants and young people.

This will support a transition in Scottish agriculture towards:

Improving the environmental impact of agriculture by using organic methods

Making supply chains between farmers and local communities much shorter, meaning fresher more healthy food

Creating opportunities for people who currently struggle to access land for farming because of the high price of land and low supply of tenancies

The model has already been successful elsewhere, but hasn’t been tried in Scotland

We take great inspiration from successful models in other countries such as Terre de Liens in France, and the Ecological Land Coop in England & Wales.  We have seen a gap and huge need for this kind of organisation in Scotland.

In 2016/17 we commissioned a study which was conducted by Nourish with Big Lottery funding which goes into more detail about the need and impact that SFLT could have in Scotland.

We also carried out a survey in 2017 to find out how many people wanted to start farming in Scotland, and had over 1000 responses. 989 were looking to establish agroecological farm businesses in Scotland. 66% of these were under 40 years old. When asked about their motivations for farming, 85% said ‘looking after the environment’ and 79% said ‘help build/sustain rural communities’.  And the biggest barrier to starting farming came out as access to land.

The Scottish Land Commission published a research paper in 2018 on increasing access to farm land for new entrants. Written by the James Hutton Institute, and featured the SFLT as a potential “new model to increase land availability for new entrants.”

Crowdfunder page

Author: We Own It

Ten Reasons Why Privatisation is Bad for You

1. Your services get worse

Public services involve caring for people. But private companies make a profit from public services by cutting corners or underinvesting. There is a conflict between making a profit and taking the time to care. For example, private care workers often can’t stop for a cup of tea with an older, vulnerable person they are caring for – because they’re only allowed 15 minutes for their visits.

2. Privatisation costs you more

You pay more, both as a taxpayer and directly when they privatise public services. Have you noticed how your water bills, energy bills, train and bus fares keep on rising in real terms? And did you know that the US privatised health system costs double what we pay for ours? In a privatised service, profits must be paid to shareholders, not reinvested in better services. Interest rates are higher for private companies than they are for government. Plus, there are the extra costs of creating and regulating an artificial market.

3. You can’t hold private companies accountable

If a private company runs a service, they are not democratically accountable to you. You don’t have a voice. Contracts to deliver public services are agreed between private companies and government behind closed doors. There is very little transparency, public accountability or scrutiny. The companies are not subject to Freedom of Information requests because of ‘commercial confidentiality’. When private companies fail to deliver, the public has no powers to intervene and government (local and national) doesn’t always have the time or expertise to force them to keep their promises.

4. Privatisation creates a divided society

Public services are important to meet everyone’s basic needs, so we can all be part of the community. Schools and hospitals are not optional extras. We all need and rely on public services – they are universal. That means they need to be accessible and high quality for everyone. Privatisation often goes hand in hand with encouraging richer people to pay more and opt out of the services we all use. This leads to division, making it harder to provide excellent public services for everyone.

5. You don’t get a democratic voice. When we go to the shops, we all make our own individual decisions about what we want. Public services are different – they give us a chance to come together to decide what kind of society we want to live in. For example, we might want clean, green energy for our future – but the private companies control the energy ‘market’ and often invest in dirty energy, without giving us a say.

6. Public services are natural monopolies

Privatisation was introduced because of a belief in free markets and consumer choice. But public services are often what economists call ‘natural monopolies’. For example, when you take the train, you don’t really have a choice about which one to use. There’s no real competition. Facebook is another, relatively new ‘natural monopoly’. If all your friends are using it, it’s difficult for you not to. Private monopolies often become the worst of all worlds. You don’t have consumer power because you can’t go elsewhere. But you don’t have power as a citizen to make the service better through democratic accountability.

7. Private companies cherry pick services

Private companies cherry pick the profitable bits of a service so they can make as much money as possible. For example, bus companies will only run services in busy areas, so rural communities lose out unless government steps in with a subsidy. It’s more efficient to run public services in public ownership so that profits can be reinvested across the whole network as needed. In probation services, private companies are paid to manage medium to low risk offenders, while the state continues to take responsibility for high risk offenders.

8. Privatisation means fragmentation

When lots of private companies are involved in delivering a public service, this can create a complicated, fragmented system where it’s not always clear who’s doing what. For example, our railway. Private companies don’t necessarily have much incentive to work together and share information. This makes it difficult to provide an integrated service. Privatisation is fragmenting our NHS and the cost of the internal market is at least £4.5 billion a year.

9. Privatisation means less flexibility

Councils and government departments are responsible for meeting the needs of the public – but privatisation means less flexibility for changing circumstances. If an outsourcing contract with a private company needs changing, government must pay more to make changes or improvements, add in extras or to opt out. And selling off public assets (like student loans) or public land (like school playing fields) means we the public have fewer options and resources for delivering the services we’ll need in the future.

10. Privatisation is risky

Look what happened when Carillion failed. If private companies are running our public services and are too big to fail, the public has to pick up the pieces when things go wrong.

Author: Andrew Anthony, The Guardian

Last year, I accompanied the former Undertones singer Feargal Sharkey as he walked along the River Lea, one of England’s many chalk streams. He told me about the deliberate neglect, commercial exploitation and pollution of these natural resources and painted a picture of a joint bureaucratic-corporate carve-up and then cover-up that has resulted in only 14% of England’s rivers reaching good ecological standards.

How that situation came to be is a story in one sense of private commercial interests seeking profit from public need. What’s often negated in that process is the longstanding relationship between personal use and public responsibility. After all, how many of us think about the communal impact of flushing the loo and allowing the tap to run while we brush our teeth?

We are a country with an abundant water supply that nonetheless suffers flooding, shortages and recurring flouting of regulations, while private water companies walk off with massive dividends. For the economist Guy Standing, who popularised the term “the precariat”, this is a classic example of plundering the “commons” – ie our natural shared wealth.

In his new book, Plunder of the Commons, he examines the concept of the commons, tracing it back to its recognition in Magna Carta and the lesser known but arguably just as significant Charter of the Forest, which dates from 1217. These documents provided legal protection for commoners to gain access and use of common land and, at least in theory, prevented medieval barons from expropriating the land.

In practice, laws were bent or changed and land that was once open to all locals was progressively swallowed up by the powerful aristocracy. A succession of royal land raids, peaking with Henry VIII, followed by a prolonged campaign of enclosures, meant that the roughly 50% of land that was held to be commons at the time of the Charter of the Forest has dwindled to just 5% today.

Of course, a huge growth in population is one significant factor in this change, but it remains perverse that vast tracts of stolen land remain the bedrock of enormous private wealth for the lauded and romanticised heirs of the robber barons. Yet the issue, Standing argues, is much larger than that. If perhaps the most important, land is only one element of the commons.

The Soas professor is concerned to take in as much as possible under that definition – from the air we breathe to the ideas we think to the internet we all use – all of which is under threat of commodification. His book is subtitled A Manifesto for Sharing Public Wealth, and, like the original Charter of the Forest, it contains a series of numbered articles, detailing provisions and prohibitions to maximise the size and sustainability of the commons.

Still, the arguments that we might apply to land, rivers and oil reserves are different, for example, to those relating to open access of the internet or intellectual property rights. There was a strong movement in the pioneering days of the web whose rallying cry was “information wants to be free”. We soon discovered that, by and large, information-gatherers want to be paid. A suitable model has yet to be worked out, though few now are suggesting that the answer is to abolish copyright.

In the media, the BBC works, as Standing acknowledges, as a kind of commons, though he criticises its “patrician” view. The licence fee, however, is not a system of funding that could be rolled out across the borderless internet. Strangely, he berates the government for forcing the partly publicly funded Channel 4 to move large parts of its business out of London on the grounds that it will inhibit the channel’s business viability. Surely distributing the cultural commons around the country, rather than concentrating them in the capital, is a progressive step?

One can quibble with these inconsistencies but what remains constant throughout is Standing’s clear prose and elegant arguments. There seems little doubt that we need to rethink how we evaluate our national wealth. The crude metric of GDP contrives to miss vital aspects of our wellbeing. We need to radically expand our sense of public space, from cityscapes through to the countryside, not just in terms of utility but also ownership and civic responsibility.

Standing raises the familiar spectre of neoliberalism as the guilty culprit, particularly in the post-Thatcher years. There are many examples to back up this thesis and, despite the inevitable simplifications, it’s one that deserves to be reheard. However, implicit in that critique is a sense of the halcyon communal days of the pre-Thatcher era, when the commons were a dreamy idyll to which we yearn to return. The reality is that public services were often very poor and public spaces underfunded and neglected.

That old Oscar Wilde line about people who know the price of everything and the value of nothing will never lose relevance. But the removal of price does not necessitate the appreciation of value. Standing has produced a significant contribution to a debate that is going to become increasingly critical as resources dwindle and consumption grows.

Author: SPAEN and Respite Now C.I.C.

The Peace of Mind programme aims to cultivate communities and nurture natural networks.

It seek to support and assist people with disabilities, long-term illness or other life limiting health conditions to think about what they would like to do and how this would make them happier and better connected with their local community.  Then we go about helping you to make it happen.

Finding Support and Making Friends

The Peace of Mind programme can help to find Personal Assistants and other SDS users in an area with share interests and who want to do the same things.

This could be going to the local swimming baths; attending a local football match; taking part in local interest groups such as arts & crafts, gymnastics or other activities.

Pooling Budgets

Because it involves doing things with other people who share the same interests, cost of paid support can be shared across the whole group, making it possible to do more of the things that people like and that matter to them.

The Peace of Mind programme will provide SDS users with important guidance and support in developing employment contracts; managing the “pooled” budget; thinking about staying safe while  taking part in activities and getting proper group insurance in place.

Read more about Peace of Mind programme

Author: CSS

To see a Map of Community Share Issues that has been compiled by Community Shares Scotland

Click here

Author: Voluntary Arts

The Epic Awards, now in their ninth year, are the premier awards for voluntary arts groups based in United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland, shining a light on their achievements and aiming to inspire others to get involved and participate in artistic and creative activities.

The Awards are run by Voluntary Arts, who promote active engagement in creative, cultural activities. Many of the 63,000 voluntary arts groups eligible in the UK and Republic of Ireland have put themselves forward for the Awards. The judging panels in each of the nations selected a total of 31 groups to be shortlisted for the final awards.

The winner and runner-up from each nation were announced on 3 October at Central Hall in Edinburgh. The event was held as part of a programme of activity celebrating active ageing and creativity and hosted by presenter Janice Forsyth. The 2019 winners received bespoke crafted awards made by arts collective Jangling Space, as well as a cash prize. Winning or being shortlisted for an Epic Award can also have very positive effects for voluntary arts groups, who find their profile raised locally and nationally and that it can help with fundraising efforts.

Huge thank you to our fantastic supporters and sponsors

SCOTLAND WINNER

“Where can I go to make music?” asked one refugee from El Salvador arriving in Scotland. The answer he was given was Musicians in Exile” – a community project for asylum seeking and refugee musicians in Glasgow.

Professional facilitators help the ensemble shape their rehearsals, but what and how they play and perform is up to the musicians themselves. There is a great deal of intercultural interaction between the musicians, supporting each other musically and performing in mixed languages and styles.

As many asylum seekers flee without their instruments, these are purchased where possible and given to the musicians on long-term loan. Once every two months, they perform in Glasgow, live-streaming the concerts on their Facebook page. This gives everyone a regular goal and also presents the musicians to the wider public.

Legally forbidden to work, playing in the ensemble offers the musicians an outlet to give back to their host communities. Music is a universal language, with the power to bridge cultural and language barriers – asylum seekers who are still mastering English, as well as audiences unfamiliar with the cultures of new Scots, find this particularly meaningful. Through the group, the musicians build a new sense of family, networks with local musicians and retrieve their intrinsic cultures, benefiting their own well-being and that of the wider community.

“When you flee a troubled land, you’ve not only left everything behind, but also have to start over in a very foreign land. Musicians In Exile gives asylum seeking musicians their instruments and voices back so they can regularly rehearse and perform again, retrieve their cultures, rebuild their networks, friendships and give back to their host communities. It’s an incredibly simple project, and as well as being revealing and healing.”

Paul MacAlindin, Artistic Director of The Glasgow Barons

All the other winners and shortlisted entries

Author: LGiU

Summary

Scotland was one of the first countries in the world to develop a national strategy to tackle social isolation. Launched in December 2018, A Connected Scotland sets a strategic vision to recognise and tackle loneliness and isolation as one of the major public health issues of our time.

There is a wealth of research on the effects of social isolation and loneliness, but there is a significant evidence-gap around how to tackle it effectively. Reviews of the effectiveness of interventions to reduce loneliness highlight that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. There are also differences of opinion about the relative impact of interventions that work at an individual or community level.

We know that loneliness and social isolation affects people at all life stages. 20 to 80 per cent of adolescents report often feeling lonely, compared to 40 to 50 per cent of older people. Researchers have also found particular groups of people to be at risk; immigrants, the unemployed, lone parents, people with long term mental health problems and disabilities, carers and people living in poverty. There are clear links between health and social inequality and loneliness with many risk factors unequally distributed across society. It is both a population level problem – identified by the RSA as one of the five New Giants of economic and social need – and a highly personal experience.

What is clear – and what is set out in the national strategy – is that everyone can contribute to creating the conditions that encourage kindness and enable inclusive communities to thrive. People who experience a connection, however fleeting, feel happier and more connected to others.

This briefing highlights projects and activities from across the UK with a primary or secondary aim of tackling social isolation. Many interventions are new and are not as well tested as familiar schemes targeted at reducing loneliness, such as befriending. They all aim, however, to provide a practical way for people to be connected and to feel happier. A common theme is both the importance of facilitating cross-sectoral partnerships and engaging local communities fully in the design and delivery of interventions.

The Restaurant that Makes Mistakes

Inspired by a pop-up restaurant in Tokyo, Channel 4’s Restaurant that Makes Mistakes partnered with the Alzheimer’s Society and Mayor of Bristol, Marvin Rees, to show that people living with dementia can make a valuable contribution to society. The restaurant was run for five weeks by volunteers, all diagnosed with forms of dementia and aged between 23 and 67. The series, like its sister production Old People’s Home for Four Year Olds, aimed to challenge public perceptions around social isolation and economic and social value.

Play Out Streets

Play out streets was started by two parents in Bristol concerned about their children’s isolation from their own neighbourhood. Compared to their own childhoods in the 1970s, the mothers thought their children were spending more time indoors, inactive and isolated. It seemed that the physical and social environment had changed to the extent that it no longer felt safe or acceptable to let their children simply ‘play out’. Closing a street to through traffic changes the atmosphere and both adults and children are encouraged to view the street as it should be – a social space for people rather than cars.

Play Streets enable people who could be feeling isolated at home to meet and chat to their neighbours in an informal setting. Playing Out Survey Reports have found that 91% of residents know more people on their street as a result of the scheme, with 84% feeling they belong more in their neighbourhood. The survey also reported that play out street closures lead to other social activities such as Christmas parties, sharing food and drink and community clean ups. 57 UK councils have now adopted a ‘Temporary Play Street’ policy and there is evidence of multiple benefits to communities with the University of Bristol finding that Play Streets could make a meaningful contribution to health.

Chat Checkouts

Efficiency in our interactions – such as contactless payments, automated phone systems and self-service tills – have decreased everyday opportunities to interact with other people. While for some people the prospect of fully automated shops, such as Amazon Go, is welcome, many people find technology is decreasing the quality as well as the frequency of contact with others. This has prompted a supermarket in Vlijmen in the Netherlands to launch a ‘chat checkout’ for shoppers who would like to talk and take a bit more time to do their shopping without worry of inconveniencing others. The chat checkout complements a ‘coffee corner’ at the supermarket where people can stop for a drink and chat to representatives from community groups and organisations.

The importance of chatting to strangers underpins the Be More Us project from the Campaign to End Loneliness, by building small moments of connection.

Grove Community Gardening

Charities and local authorities have a long history of using gardening to bring people and communities together. In recent years, community-led movements have grown across the UK around allotments, community gardens and foraging, with a focus on health and wellbeing, inclusion and reducing social isolation. In many areas, local authorities have made land available for community growing but the pressure of development or ownership issues can present challenges.

Grove Community Garden demonstrates that community gardening can happen anywhere with a mobile garden making temporary use of two unused urban development sites. One part of the garden is dedicated to pallet bed units that can be moved by forklift and give residents the chance to grow their own vegetables, fruit and herbs in an inclusive and supportive environment. Tools and equipment are available in a coded box. The rest of the garden is a shared communal space, offering social, cultural and environmental activities. The mobile garden also participates in the Power of Food festival which showcases community food growing in Edinburgh and its social impact.

Good Gym

Good Gym is based around integrating social connections into everyday activities and exercise. The charity was set up to harness the energy expended in gyms across the country to help people experiencing social isolation. Volunteers can participate in group runs to complete a community activity, such as gardening or painting or can volunteer for one-off tasks, such as running to buy groceries or change a light bulb. Volunteers can also commit to a weekly run to visit an older person, who acts as their coach and motivation for a cup of tea and a chat once a week. The project gives members a reason to run different routes and helps tackle social isolation through intergenerational support and mentoring. From a local authority perspective, this type of project also has the potential to differentiate council run leisure services from commercial gyms and to reposition the role of exercise in reducing social isolation.

Chat Benches

Placemaking and the planning system is often overlooked in discourse around social isolation. This is in contrast to the body of evidence available linking the quality of neighbourhoods and perceptions of isolation and loneliness. Streets which are well designed and well maintained encourage people to use local amenities and engage with local services. Creating and supporting walkable neighbourhoods where people want to spend time is a key objective of the planning system. Regeneration and transforming under-utilised areas in communities, such as creating new community cafes, art spaces or gardens is a well evidenced approach to increasing community cohesion and individual participation.

Physical infrastructure such as community centres, parks, greenspaces and traffic free paths are the foundations of a community. Local authorities have a role in ensuring that these are delivered when new neighbourhoods are created. There is also a need to promote the added social value of in person services to the private sector such as post-offices, banks and ATMs, particularly in rural areas.

Small-scale interventions in the local environment can have a big impact on reducing social isolation. In Somerset, two ‘chat benches’ – public seating with signs inviting people to stop and chat – have been installed by the police with a specific aim of tackling loneliness. Parklets, are another relatively low-cost way to improve the local environment and support informal social interaction. Planning for and creating a parklet is a way for local authorities, local businesses and residents to work together to reimagine how a street supports the community. Parklet projects in the UK and USA have led to other cross-sectoral partnerships and initiatives and opened up conversations around opportunities to increase the social impact of small businesses.

Comment

Social isolation is a complex issue at both a societal and individual level. Poverty and deprivation changes the way people form relationships. The modern focus on individual economic success and digital communication is juxtaposed against a vision of active, vibrant communities offering support and activities accessible to all. There is a lack of evidence about how to overcome barriers to participation and which interventions offer the best chance of success in preventing and tackling social isolation, but there is not a lack of activity. The barriers raised by poverty, ill health, caring responsibilities and limited or no access to accessible transport are profound. Yet communities across the UK are increasing social capital during a time of widespread inequality; delivering activities to bring people together in a natural way that meets their social needs. Many interventions are relatively low cost and local authorities play an important strategic role. Local government is well placed to make the connections between existing activities and resources and to raise public awareness of social isolation and what is on offer in the community. Designing kindness into our culture, communities and ways of working can be as straightforward as telling people they are welcome to come on their own, that they are not alone.

Author: Press and Journal

A school owned by the community and leased to the council opened its doors to pupils for the first time yesterday.

It is believed the enterprise is the first of its kind in Scotland.

The paths of Strontian were lined with former pupils and residents as primary-school-aged children walked between the two schools for the first day in the new premises.

A live twitter feed celebrated the news, it read: “History made! A fantastic and emotional day as our community-owned and built primary school opens to pupils for the first time.”

The honour of the ribbon cutting ceremony went to the school’s youngest pupil Fionn Togher, the school’s primary one pupil. He had watched the school being built, while he attended nursery.

Earlier in the morning there was a procession of 32 pupils and teachers led by Ardnamurchan piper Iain Michie, and headteacher Pamela Hill. They walked the schools pupils from the old 1970-built school to the new building that sits near Ardnamurchan High School.

Pupils had made flags to celebrate the occasion.

Pupils and staff at the nearby Ardnamurchan High School vacated lessons for the early part of the morning to wave primary school pupils into their new classrooms.

A spokeswoman for Strontian Community School concluded: “Finally, special thanks once again to all those who made this project happen, both within and out with our community, especially Susan, Fiona, David and colleagues at The Highlands Small Communities Housing Trust, and Kenneth and Susan MacDonald and the team at S&K MacDonald Homes.”

The building cost £900,000, and was built after Highland Council had proposed making improvements to the old school, before the community took it upon themselves to finance their own school building.

If the school is no longer needed in the future, the building has been designed in such a way it can be converted into affordable homes.

The construction of the new primary was completed in August. Highland Council accepted ownership of the building some weeks claiming a number of snags with the building had held back the official handover of the building.

Highland Council has been advertising for a headteacher for the school, after the current post holder leaves in the next week or so.

The closing date for the position has passed, and it is understood that interviews for the post will now take place.

Author: Sev Carrell, The Guardian

Scotland’s islands have the highest proportion of co-operatives of any part of the UK thanks to a long tradition of self-reliance, a survey has found.

The study by Co-operatives UK, the sector’s development body, said its survey of co-ops by local authority area found the Western Isles and Orkney topped the table with 8.16 and 5.91 co-ops respectively per 10,000 people. Shetland came in third, with 5.63. Eden in Cumbria came in joint fourth, with 4.55, followed by nearby Allerdale with 3.6.

The Scottish sector’s businesses are generally small, often community shops which provide the only stores in scarcely populated island communities. There are also credit unions, community energy companies and fishing co-ops.

The findings have been published as part of Co-operatives UK’s annual economic survey. It put its total turnover UK-wide at £37.7bn for 2018-19, a little over 1% higher than last year’s figure of £37.6bn and 2.75% higher than the £36.3bn in 2016-17.

The study confirmed that the John Lewis Partnership, the employee-owned group which includes Waitrose food stores, was the UK’s largest co-op with a turnover of £10.3bn; the Co-op itself narrowly behind on £10.2bn. Arla, the Denmark-based diary co-op, came third with a turnover of £2.6bn.

Excluding turnover, the data shows a slight decline in the sector’s size overall. The UK had 7,215 co-ops employing more than 233,000 people in the last financial year, compared with 7,226 employing nearly 235,000 a year earlier.

The report highlighted the Papay Community Co-operative, which runs the only shop and hostel on Papa Westray. The Orkney island has a resident population of about 85 people but is popular with island-hoppers on holiday. The business is close to Papa Westray’s airport, famous as a departure point for the world’s shortest scheduled service, a two-minute, 1.7-mile (2.8km) flight to nearby Westray.

Tim Dodman, the co-op’s secretary, said the business had an annual turnover of about £250,000 and employed four people, with some part-time help during busy periods. It also runs the school bus and local tours.

It was founded in 1980 after the only shop closed and no one could be found to run a new one single-handed. “The co-op ethos is very important,” Dodman said. “This is a small island and pretty remote. It’s much better to work cooperatively than have one individual in control of a lifeline service.”

Author: Poverty Alliance

Ready to challenge poverty?  Challenge Poverty Week 2019

Challenge Poverty Week has been coordinated by the Poverty Alliance for the last seven years, and it is an opportunity to highlight what is being done to address poverty, showcase the solutions we can all get behind to solve it, and commit to more action in the future. The Week takes place from the 7th to the 13th October 2019.

Last year nearly 200 actions were delivered by 130 organisations, elected representatives and individuals as part of Challenge Poverty Week.

Why not take part?

You can get involved in Challenge Poverty Week by organising an activity or supporting it on the media and social media. You can, for example:

• Write a blog, make a video or talk to the media about the solutions to poverty
• Organise a themed discussion
• Have an open day at your organisation
• Speak to a local politician about what needs to be done

You can find an activity toolkit here: https://www.challengepoverty.net/resources/

Key messages

The key messages for this year’s Challenge Poverty Week are:

Challenge Poverty in Scotland?  Aye, we can!

• Too many people in Scotland are trapped in the grip of poverty
• By boosting people’s incomes and reducing the cost of living we can solve poverty
• Solving poverty is about ensuring we can all participate in a just and compassionate society

How can we help you?

The Poverty Alliance will give all the support we can to help you participate in the Week. This support will include:

• Provide an activity toolkit to help you get involved. Ask Campaigns Officer Irene for a copy: irene.tortajada@povertyalliance.org
• Promote your activity or content through local media, social media and our event calendar
• Give individualised advice. (Email Irene at irene.tortajada@povertyalliance.org)
• Provide social media graphics, media templates, lesson plans and petition letters