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The dangers of summer holidays

Monday, August 16th, 2010

Our co-founder David Robinson posted on Comment is Free last week, highlighting the mass of government consultations underway this summer, and the danger that holidays distract the non-profit sector from responding.

“It’s no secret that David Cameron’s new government is seeking radical and rapid change: by their own admission they are hitting the ground faster than either Thatcher or Blair. With consultations spewing out of every department, on everything from welfare reform to bank taxes to government websites, there is a danger that organisations or individuals with something valuable to contribute will be caught napping, or off on summer holidays, leaving unscrutinised policies wreaking havoc in two years’ time.”

Read the rest of the article here

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Mo Farah victory shows the Olympics how it’s done

Wednesday, August 4th, 2010

Just under two years before the Olympics arrive in east London, Mo Farah’s spectacular double victory in the European Championships last week is about more than the obvious recognition of his skill and dedication. Reading about his background, and  looking at the photos from our own Community Links sports day held the same week – arguably less professional but certainly no less competitive – I realised Mo’s story tells us something more about how success comes about.

Mo was born in Somalia, came to the UK aged 8, set off in the wrong direction in his first race aged 14, trains just down the road from Community Links at the Newham and Essex Beagles, and is the first Britain ever to win gold in the 5,000m and 10,000m at a European Championship.

This Independent article explains that one of the biggest influences on Mo’s success has been his school athletics coach, who recognised the potential in an otherwise difficult young man, and over several years mentored him towards his first gold medal, ending up best man at Mo’s wedding. We’ve often said and shown how this kind of deeper one to one relationship has the potential to transform lives, and Mo is a high profile example.

In “Britain’s Everyday Heroes” a book we published three years ago with then PM Gordon Brown we celebrated the work of Dave Green, a local man who has been a coach with Newham and Essex Beagles for over fifty years, volunteering to support others and sharing his passion for athletics with succeeding generations. Dave has worked with hundreds of young people.  Some, but by no means all, have gone on to be champions but each was treated seriously and supported by Dave – he said “ We have had youngsters over here who have been in trouble, but it has worked out once you get them really interested. A lot of them are good kids anyway right from the start. The kids that come on their own are the ones that really need to be looked after more, because they have no encouragement from their families or anybody else… The kids are all very keen, and the more input you give to them the keener they get.”

The coaches running our own sports day – most of whom first got involved when they came along to play as kids – are having a similar effect on the lives of the hundreds of young people taking part. They might not all go on to win gold, but they’re all benefiting from the kind of tailored, encouraging support that most people take for granted from friends and family, but some live without.

When east London won the Olympics bid we said we wanted to see young Newham residents running the Olympics and running in the Olympics, not just picking up the litter. Sadly, Mo (and let’s claim him as an east Londoner), might be the exception in a borough where most have found it hard to get jobs or get involved in the games. In Newham – the youngest and most diverse borough in the UK – Mo the young, black immigrant growing up in a poor household would not stand out. But the uniqueness of his story, both amongst the UK’s potential Olympians and those running the games,  shows just how far we have to go before the Olympics really do transform east London.

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Posted in General, Leadership | No Comments »

A Big Society… and four economy sized societies

Monday, July 19th, 2010

Community Action bannerPerhaps I’m too cynical or just insufficiently pragmatic but I urge caution in our response to government rhetoric on the Big Society, at least until we see more detail.

Matthew Taylor says the RSA could be called the think tank for the Big Society so closely are the visions aligned. So could Community Links and, I suspect, a lot of other organisations. This might signal an opportunity or it might be a warning. Few can dissemble from the warm words but is it really possible in practise to please so many people?

Thus far we’re promised some old ideas rebranded Big Society – the social investment bank for example , some reworked – the social action day was consumer tested last year and rejected , some relatively small new ones – funding the training (though not the employment) of community organisers for instance and, today, four Economy Size Societies in the Eden Valley, Windsor , Sutton and Liverpool. Worthy initiatives perhaps but scarcely amounting yet to a brave new vision. The more ambitious iterations of the Big Society are less clear and more worrying – Andrew Lansley claimed the label for his NHS reforms as did Michael Gove for independent schools.

Here my concern is less about the producer interests of the organisations on this patch – third sector agencies and social enterprises may well grow the business, but much more about the best interests of our service users, particularly the most excluded.  Some of the services on which the most vulnerable are most dependent are clearly threatened and could, under the cover of the Big Society, diminish significantly over the next couple of years. Not necessarily but very possibly.

Arriving for work at Community Links in Canning Town this morning I passed a long queue of people waiting for advice or practical support in this, one of the UKs most disadvantaged communities. The questions I ask of every government programme are the same today as everyday. “How does it meet their needs? How does it tackle poverty, not just money but poverty of opportunity, and what more could be done?” I’m not sure that what I know about the Big Society, or what its leading minister, Francis Maude, had to say about it last week,  helps me with the answers.

Criticism at this stage is of course just as empty as wide eyed enthusiasm. It simply isn’t yet time for the jury to return. We could however be thinking more about the criteria for   judgement, the basis on which we might   appraise the Big Society , challenge it, build it. Our Chain Reaction network has begun this work with a statement of principles sketching our vision of the good society, outlining the principles that might underpin that vision and suggesting the expectations, for ourselves and for government that might flow from this analysis.  We put forward this vision, these values and these expectations for ourselves and for government as a set of principles that might guide the judgements that we make and the work that we do.

We share it as a work in progress and invite others to contribute.

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Posted in Community Engagement, Innovation, Leadership | 3 Comments »

Giving Canning Town a LIFT

Monday, July 5th, 2010

LIFT Canning Town Just around the corner from our headquarters building in Canning Town an intriguing new structure has been taking shape behind the hoardings over the last few weeks. Here in east London amid the Olympics building work and other huge regeneration projects we are used to seeing things change. The new building on the site of former council housing is actually a mobile performance venue – basically a big tent  – and provides a temporary home to the London International Festival of Theatre.

For a few weeks this empty patch of ground will be transformed into a venue for a diverse range of drama as well as a full programme of eclectic events stretching from boxing to haircuts by children!

As part of the fun Community Links will be taking over the space for a full day next Monday 12th July.  We will be presenting a Family Fun day with a programme of activity and taster sessions including a chance to get professional advice and help filling in forms; Keep Fit; Pensioners Bingo; Salsa Dance workshop; after-school craft activities for local children and ending up with music and street dance performances from young people in the Youth Zone until 9:00pm

It’s great to have unused bits of urban land put to community use and bringing drama to areas outside the west end of London is to be celebrated. Come and join us at our family fun day next week – or come sooner and take in a show. Highlights this week include free performances of  “She from the Sea” by Zawe Ashton from the Clean Break Company – a theatre company using theatre for personal and political change, working with women whose lives have been affected by the criminal justice system. The programme outlines the performance :

Pearl, Masha and Edlin are trying to move on.  A simple life by the sea is all they need to forget their pasts.  But when a mysterious visitor is washed up, she brings with her a dark history that threatens their new way of life. A decision must be made.   Let her stay or make her swim?

Hooked?  … I might see you there….   7.30pm, 8 July 2010 or 2.30pm & 7.30pm, 9 July 2010. Loads of other interesting and exciting things are happening and it is a great opportunity to experience something new in an unusual setting.

Have a look at the full programme and do drop-in on Monday 12th to join in the  Community Links family fun day.

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Posted in Communication, Innovation, Inspiration, Regeneration | No Comments »

Volunteers Week: celebrating our volunteering stars.

Friday, June 4th, 2010

This week (June 1-7) is Volunteers Week and provides the perfect opportunity to take time to thank all the wonderful volunteers who give their time to help others.

Community Links provides volunteers with the opportunity to make a meaningful difference for others while gaining practical experience, skills and insights for themselves. This is why hundreds of volunteers get involved in all areas of our work. As a multipurpose organization we have all sorts of volunteering opportunities including activities with children and young people, filling in complex forms with clients of our Welfare Rights Advice team , providing research for our policy and campaigning work and all sorts of tasks alongside Senior Management as well as our Trustee board.

We have individual volunteers coming to work on a specific session, longer term interns working on a particular project and volunteer groups from our corporate supporters. Our friends in the city – our corporate volunteers – may come to us and undertake a volunteering challenge or run a team building workshop or they may engage disadvantaged young people at Community Links and give them the opportunity to visit company offices for extensive workshops on CV, interview and presentation skills, helping to break down barriers and raise aspirations amongst the young people to achieve their full potential.

Whichever way we work together volunteers make an enormous difference to the work we do, over the last three years we have benefited from almost 82,000 hours of volunteer time – that equates to about nine years and four months of one person’s time, 24 hours a day.  But the true value is not measured simply in the hours spent – it is often the one-to-one human contact between someone with the time to spend taking an interest in a person who needs a little support. Sometimes setting up and running a pensioners tea-dance, taking a group of children to the zoo for the first time, mentoring a young person struggling with school – or just having fun together can bring significant brightness to another person’s life.

We believe that everyone has the potential to do great things and that sometimes all people need is a little bit of help to feel empowered to take the next step. We have many members of staff working with us who first began as volunteers and we’d  like to think about how we can progress and develop volunteers over time by referring them to different Community Links projects to gain relevant experience, helping them to gain access to appropriate training and accreditation to gain relevant qualifications and ultimately enable them to secure employment as a result of their valuable volunteer experience.

We are grateful to all the volunteers who support our work and the work of other community groups and voluntary sector agencies. It is heartening to think of so many “willing citizens” volunteering to help others  “not because they are forced from without but because they are compelled from within” as we said in our report on the many forms of community involvement Willing Citizens and the Making of the Good Society.

If  you want to get involved with out work as a volunteer have a look at our website and please get in touch you will be made very welcome.

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Posted in Community Engagement, Inspiration, Volunteering | 1 Comment »

Prevention is the best way to tackle the budget deficit

Friday, May 28th, 2010

Politicians local and national will be making tough decisions in the months ahead. It would be easy to prioritise acute services and reduce investment in prevention. Easy but wrong.

For more than 30 years at Community Links we have been persuading policy makers, commissioners and independent funders to think about fences at the top of the cliff rather than ambulances at the bottom. It may seem a difficult argument in these straightened times but spending more now on, for instance, detached youth work with young people who aren’t a danger to themselves and others would be better by far than waiting for the really expensive problems to develop. There is scarcely any area of health care, education or social policy where prevention or early intervention doesn’t make best sense – socially and financially.

It is for this reason that Treasury Chief Secretary David Laws’ largely unreported answer to MP Graham Allen’s question on Wednesday was particularly significant.  “Will the minister,” Allen asked, “seek to address some of the problems of the structural deficit by ensuring that we invest in babies, children and young people, so that they do not later require billions of pounds of remedial treatment for drug addiction, teenage pregnancy and a lack of aspiration in education and work, and so that we can build the type of society that most of us in the Chamber want to see?”

Laws replied, “The honourable gentleman is absolutely right. As we take tough decisions and come towards the spending review at the end of the year, we will have to try to maintain the services that we particularly value and that protect individuals in society who are on very low incomes. We need to protect investments that have the potential to pay off in the future, and I promise him that I will examine carefully the matters that he mentions”.

We do what we do because we believe that we all have an equal right to fulfil our potential. Some need help; advice, training  or practical support. We haven’t hitherto framed it as a contribution to the structural deficit. Perhaps we should.

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New look, same blog

Friday, April 30th, 2010

A quick break from the usual incisive commentary and insight from our East London streets, with a quick post to point out our new look. LinksUK has always been a part of Community Links even though we looked different. We’re making it more obvious who we are by moving the blog into the Community Links website.

For those of you who aren’t aware of Community Links, we’re a community charity based in East London. Besides writing blogs, we work with 30,000 people each year, providing everything from advice services to the most successful back-to-work scheme in London, youth clubs, children’s activities, our own school for excluded pupils, and even run Newham City Farm. Do take a look around the website to find out more.

Apologies for any glitches in the blog, do let us know if you see any, and we can sort them out.

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Will the era of televised debate transform politics in the UK?

Monday, April 19th, 2010

Arriving into work on Friday, Jackie and Jane, who are both local residents and members of staff at Community Links were discussing the first ever live election debate in the UK. They told me they have never really been interested in national politics before, or never felt engaged, but went on to explain how Thursday’s broadcast has changed this:

“I have never had any interest in politics before, but this time I am voting because this is something I heard, I understand and now am interested in. I have spoken to so many local people who have said the same thing.

(more…)

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Posted in Attitudes, Voices from the Ground Up | No Comments »

Should Parliament move to east London?

Friday, February 12th, 2010

MPs have put forward a suggestion that Parliament should move its premises to east London’s ExCel centre. This is just a few minutes away from our base in Canning Town so we asked our staff what they thought, 80% of our staff live locally or are ex-service users.

Here’s what they said:

‘Not sure why ExCel would be considered a location more in touch with real life. It is in many ways more isolated than Westminster.’

‘I think that’s a great idea, especially as Newham, even though the host borough for the Olympics is still one of the poorest boroughs, and the politicians would get a better insight to the area and its problems.’

‘I would strongly disagree due to the strain on local roads, facilities etc. Also, with the constant threat of terrorism I do not like the idea of such high profile figures at the end of my road.’

‘I think it’s a great idea for Parliament to be located in the heart of East London, especially with a backdrop of the recent tarnished media image of Westminster politics & expenses scandals over the last year. The areas of regeneration immediately surrounding the ExCel Centre, such as Canning Town and Newham in general would provide a daily reminder, and accurate snapshot of the array of challenges facing people today. Westminster Palace can be seen to be a location that can often be seen to be its own detached and removed world. In addition there could be marked cost reduction benefits to the tax payer also, and potential to make such a site a sustainable one, perhaps helping to restore some faith in the public that politics and voting is a system one should try to engage with in order to help address society’s problems.’

‘My experience of the Excel centre is that it is a place full of ’suits’ on dubious expenses!!!!!!’

‘I really don’t want them in east London.  We already have enough agro when the biannual DSEI exhibition is held at the Excel.  Then we will have the massive inconvenience of “heightened security” from about April 2011 until the end of the games.  We have permanent armed cops in Royal Docks because of the airport!’

I personally think instead of the Excel centre perhaps some of them should move in with us to see how the real day to day to life is like, see what we have to put up with, I bet half of them would be scared to go out after 6pm. Most of them don’t know what real life is like, with all their pampering up at Whitehall.

There we go again, they want the accommodation in the Olympic village and to be in for 2012……..

“Once the Olympic athletes have left the Village how about turning it into dormitory accommodation for MPs right next to a new Parliament – that way nobody would need to apply for a second home allowance and the security and official transport could all be pooled making a financial saving.”

Apart from the obvious benefit, the creation of a local food outlet other that one long standing bakery to swarm to for lunch, we would have MPs at our doorstep. Would local east London people get more involved in governmental affairs as a result? Would the cynicism and lack of trust that has increased since the MP expenses scandal in the summer gradually disappear (that is why MPs are suggesting this surely?!), probably not.

The Canary Wharf development is a stones throw from Canning Town and has had very little impact on local residents in all the years that is has been there. When asked what impact Canary Wharf has had, our community development team replied that ‘most locals say it is for rich people, there is a stigma to it as it cost millions and it has no place for them, the shops are lovely but far too expensive so its just somewhere some feel them can go for a nice wander around’

If government is trying to find ways to reconnect with the public and be in touch with real life issues to win back that trust they have completely lost then it will take more than packing up and moving location. That is a mis-diagnosis of the problem. We have had political apathy for a long time; in the 2005 election there was an overall voting turnout of 61.4% in the UK, a slight rise in an overall declining trend from previous decades. Last summer’s revelations fed ammunition to turn that apathy to resentment. Parliament needs to changes its practices; get out, listen and take action, not relocate to what is considered less attractive dwellings and adopt exactly the same customs as before. The geography isn’t the problem; it’s the lack of listening to real people. Not just listening for the sake of an election but to take action and do something about it. That will win the hearts and minds of local people and make it worthwhile to plan a trip over to Westminster.

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Posted in Communication, Community Engagement, Regeneration | No Comments »

My experience at the Jobcentre

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

Simon Gibson works part time as a community worker, volunteers with Community Links, and is taking a Community Development course. This is his experience at the Jobcentre

This is my first blog about my experience of being unemployed. I was made redundant after 20 years of working. I had never really taken much time before to find a job and usually just took whatever I could find.

This time I was unemployed I had reached a stage in my life (aged 41) where I wanted to make sure I just didn’t do anything but something I really wanted to do.

Luckily I was offered a job, 16 hour part-time work in something I really wanted. However, the information I got from the Job centre was that I was not entitled to any benefits unless I was actively looking for full time employment. I have since discovered this is not true.

It seems that the Job Centre is obsessed in getting people into work even though it might not be the work they want to do. There was no real understanding of my situation and I was not really treated as a person who needed to be worked with and understood. It was all about looking for work regardless of whether you are ready or know what is right for you.

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Posted in employment | No Comments »

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