May/June 2016
the echo
Our vision: CARING, VIBRANT and STRONG communities where everyone can fulfil their potential. Our mission: CONNECTING and INSPIRING people and organisations to achieve positive change, while CHAMPIONING their value to partners and the wider community.
Volunteers are worth their weight in gold! InAwards this issue Nominations open for Dudley Volunteer
Did you know that there are fabulous volunteers across our borough, donating their time to help in all sorts of ways? Help us reveal these gems in our community and celebrate their contribution by nominating them for Dudley Volunteer Awards 2016. The launch of the 2016 Awards comes at the beginning of Volunteers Week (1–12 June 2016), a national celebration of volunteers and the difference they make every day. We want Dudley Volunteer Awards to inspire people to nominate amazing local volunteers and voluntary groups who are shining examples of the difference volunteers make across our borough. We are also seeking nominations for local businesses whose staff volunteer to help the community, or support community activities. The closing date for nominations is 22 August and the awards ceremony will be held on 20 October. How to nominate: Visit dva2016.wordpress.com/nominate or call Dudley CVS on 01384 573381 for a nomination form.
In this issue Dudley Volunteer Awards Successful organisations Dudley MCP event Carers Week Small Charity Week Urban growing in Dudley Dudley Civics Lounge Top Church Dudley Social media surgeries AVAILABLE IN LARGE CoLab Dudley PRINT ON REQUEST Mental Health Awareness Dudley SOUP Microvolunteering Charity news Well done Jason
Celebrating success! Gornal volunteers keep youth club going! People in Lower Gornal have rallied, mobilised and rolled up their sleeves to reopen the Friday night youth club at Lower Gornal Youth Centre, and Dudley CVS has been supporting them to make it happen! The youth club was previously run by Dudley Council, but had to close last summer. Since September, CVS team member Becky has been supporting a group of adults who were interested in bringing the youth club back, helping with developing an efficient committee and producing their constitution, which they needed in order to apply for a start-up grant from Dudley’s Community Forum. Becky also ran a workshop where volunteers could develop their plan. The group also got support from CVS team members Nicki and Eileen, as well as from the Youth Service’s Abdul Hamed. Thanks to the support, the group: received a £4,000 grant from the Community Forum to give their club a great kick start has over 30 volunteers they can call on so that they can manage a weekly rota of cover has built a membership list of over 40 young people and at least 30 attend regularly. Committee member Lisa Blackham said the help “made everything happen. We wouldn’t have even known where to start if it hadn’t been for CVS. We are now running a very successful youth club with over 70 children registered… we get around 40 children most weeks and the feedback from them has been great.” To read Becky’s account of working with the group, visit: tinyurl.com/zefzzse
Headway Black Country – awarded £375,000 by Lottery Headway Black Country supports people affected with Acquired Brain Injury (ABI), helping both survivors and their families/carers to manage the condition and improving their quality of life. Back in 2012 Dudley CVS supported the charity to secure a Lottery grant of just over £265,000. The success of this work encouraged Headway Black Country to apply again to the Reaching Communities programme. The new grant would fund a wraparound package of more accessible day services whilst providing more support in hospitals/communities and delivering more and better information and advice. Headway Black County Chief Officer Stephen Phipps spoke of his delight at the charity securing £375,737 over the next 3 years, stating that Headway could increase their range of services resulting in supporting more people, improving their quality of life and reducing the demands on statutory services. Part of this expansion of services includes extending their outreach and early support into hospitals/clinics and communities around the Black Country. Stephen also complimented Dudley CVS Funding Officer Martin on the support he provided throughout the application process. Martin, he said, is very knowledgeable and well organised and provided a high standard of advice and guidance, acting as a critical friend helping to keep the application on track at all stages. Dudley CVS is delighted to have supported Headway with this Lottery application, knowing that the funding will provide much needed support for people living with ABI across the whole of the Black Country.
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Coming up Dudley’s Multi-Speciality Community Provider An event for the voluntary sector Thursday 23 June 2016, 1pm–4pm Trustees, staff and volunteers from voluntary organisations, community groups, faith groups and social enterprises are invited to an event to learn more about the establishment of a new multi-speciality community provider (MCP) for health and care and explore the role of the voluntary sector within it. Dudley’s new MCP will be responsible for delivering Dudley’s new models of care against the following themes: Improved access to care – resulting in improved patient experience and ultimately healthier lifestyles Continuity of care provision – supporting stable management of long term conditions, reducing variation in care and ultimately reducing inequalities Coordination of care – enabling people needing care and support to remain in their own homes, reducing social isolation and ultimately remaining connected to their community. This is part of ongoing work co-ordinated by All Together Better, a partnership of local NHS and care organisations, general practitioners and the voluntary sector in Dudley borough. The model of care which All Together Better works towards is based on the principles of shared ownership, responsibilities and benefits in thinking about people’s healthcare needs and possible healthcare outcomes. The shared vision is to put Dudley people at the heart of integrated doctor-led health and care services, with a focus on communities being more engaged in thinking about their health care needs and the design of services, achieving better health outcomes, and improvements in wellbeing. For more information contact Kate Green, Dudley CVS on 01384 573381 or email: buildingblocks@dudleycvs.org.uk | To book for the event visit: tinyurl.com/zkubxrj
A new partnership called Dudley Carers Alliance has been formed to support the many people caring for friends or family across Dudley borough. In the UK one in every eight adults is an unpaid carer. Carers come in all shapes and sizes, ages and ethnicities. They might care for a friend, family member or neighbour. June 6 to 12 is National Carers Week an annual celebration of the role carers’ play. It promotes the rights of anyone caring for a relative or friend with a long term illness, disability or age-related frailty. During National Carers Week the Alliance will be out and about in the community with a roadshow offering help and advice to carers and their families. Monday 6 June – Russell’s Hall Hospital 11am–3pm and 6pm-8pm Tuesday 7 June – Cornbow Centre Halesowen 11am–3pm Wednesday 8 June – Stourbridge Library & outside by the Crown Centre 11am–3pm Thursday 9 June – Churchill Centre Dudley 11am–2pm & Merry Hill Centre 4pm–7pm Friday 10 June – Gornal Library 11am-1pm and Sedgley 2pm-4pm (venue TBC) Help on offer includes financial advice and options for practical support, help with getting time to yourself, advice on keeping healthy and well, support to feel less stressed and guidance on planning for the future. Contact Dudley Carers Alliance for expert, impartial help and advice on 01384 818723.
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Get involved Celebrate Small Charity Week with us! Dudley CVS will join Small Charity Week (13th-18th June) again this year and want to invite Dudley borough’s small charities to help us celebrate and put your organisation on the map! Small Charity Week celebrates and raises awareness of the wonderful work of charities and social enterprises that have an annual turnover of £1.5million. Dudley CVS team members Becky, Donna, Eileen and Martin, will be teaming up with Business Connector Andrew Mullaney to run a series of events and activities linked to each day’s theme: I love small charities day (Monday) - a celebration of small charities on social media Big Advice Day (Tuesday) - Eileen and Becky will run a special drop in to help you to run your charity or social enterprise (DY1, 10am-4pm) Policy Day (Wednesday) - Donna will be sharing how Dudley Parent-Carer Forum has worked to influence and design services with decision-makers (on www.dudleycvsblog.com) Fundraising Day (Thursday) - Andrew Mullaney is running a special Synergy event for charities and social enterprises and will be joined by CVS team member Martin to talk about fundraising (DY1, 10am-12noon) Volunteering Day (Friday) - Eileen is running a speed-networking event for organisations that involve volunteers. To book for this event, visit: tinyurl.com/zmqau8b For more on Small Charity Week and how to get involved, visit: tinyurl.com/jfzy4lf.
Join us in starting Incredible Edible Dudley Incredible Edible (incredibleediblenetwork.org.uk) is a network of over 100 groups of people who have created vegetable plots in all sorts of unlikely places in their villages, towns and cities. People have started plots on council and church land, in pub gardens and even in castle moats! There are all sorts of growing projects across Dudley borough. From Seed & Feed in the Wrens Nest Community Centre garden (seedandfeed.wordpress.com), to Hillside Herbs (tinyurl.com/glk9fzq), to residents planting spring bulbs in parks in Coseley, to guerrilla gardening in Stourbridge! On every street there are people with gardening skills and knowledge, and many people who would like to learn from them. There’s nothing stopping us from growing vegetables everywhere. Donna Roberts is inviting eager growers to get involved with urban food growing around the DY1 building on Stafford Street in Dudley. To learn more about how Donna became inspired to grow, read her story on the Dudley CVS blog (tinyurl.com/jhasggj). Come along each Tuesday, 10am-12noon, to be inspired by what other people have done and share your ideas for this growing project. All welcome (you don’t need to book, just pop along). If you’ve never tried growing, don’t worry, you can learn from other people. If you’ve got green fingers why not share your skills and seeds?
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Get involved Dudley Civics Lounge Dudley CVS has teamed up with the people behind Dudley Smart Region Hub to bring you Dudley Civics Lounge: regular free hands-on digital and tech support for community groups, local charities and campaigners. You can get help with: Creating digital campaigns Building apps and other digital products Website development Social media for social impact Project branding Dudley Civics Lounge is informal, one-to-one support. Bring your laptop or mobile devices, and logins and passwords for your online accounts, website etc. You will sit with people who know how to create all sorts of magic on the internet. They are keen to know about the great work you do, and would like to help you with the ways you engage people online. Dudley Civics Lounge takes place every other Friday, 11.30am-4.00pm, in the coffee shop at DY1 on Stafford Street, where you can buy hot and cold drinks and food until 2.30pm. The support is totally free, get as much as you can fit into a session. Places are limited, but you may come along with someone else from your group or organisation. Please register in advance at www.colabdudley.eventbrite.com
Making it one of your Top Spaces in Dudley: Top Church An invitation from Isabel Assaly, The Churches Conservation Trust “Come along to Top Church on Saturday 9 July and help shape the future of this stunning building. Since it was built in 1815 Top Church has served the changing community of Dudley and is now considering how it can be better used by local people. Whether as a space to meet, a place to run your own business enterprise or as a performance venue we would like to meet you and find out what your need is and how Top Church can meet that need. The beauty of Top Church conceals its own hidden need: substantial repairs. This event is the first planned to explore how these new uses (in addition to worship) can help grow income and pay for ongoing repairs. Finding new uses for Top Church by making it more relevant and accessible to people will help us to ensure that this well known and much loved community building remains at the heart of town life. We’ll be working with Dudley CVS to capture your views on the day and trial some activities to demonstrate the future possibilities of the space. The Top Space: Top Church event will run throughout the day (further details will be circulated shortly). For further information please contact Isabel Assaly – iassaly@thecct.org.uk”
Social Media Surgeries coming up "I’m really excited! I can't wait to have a play now and look at my followers.” This is what Tina from Black Country Housing told us after receiving help with Twitter at Stourbridge Social Media surgery. Karen from Top Church training said "I have overcome a massive barrier as I can now do what I need to. Our communication will be instant. I can do it now!" Get free support with social media for your group, club or society. Surgeries are coming up in Dudley on Thursday 19 May at 6pm, and Halesowen on Thursday 9 June at 9.30am. Go to www.socialmediasurgery.com
to find surgeries and register your free place.
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News CoLab Dudley CoLab Dudley has just launched a new website and season of events and workshops. Behind CoLab Dudley are enthusiastic Dudley CVS staff who are eager to share their learning and experiences, and a growing network of people who are passionate about new ways of working which make the most of the amazing resources we have in Dudley borough. On 6 April CoLab Dudley convened a 10 strong team who are going to start micro-granting dinners for community projects (see the article about Dudley SOUP on page 7). On 12 April, CoLab Dudley hosted Bostincamp, bringing together 15 people to hear about the great work of Dudley’s Business Connector, and Dudley Smart Region Hub. On 18 April CoLab Dudley transformed the hall at DY1 to a cosy pop-up cinema for the launch of Ideas Worth Spreading, a season of inspiring talks. This was followed by a Tools and Tactics workshop where people from different groups and organisations got hands-on with useful methods for developing creative community projects. Then on 26 April a Pop-up Lab was created at DY1 and NHS Confederation members were welcomed and introduced to innovation activity in Dudley. They all left feeling inspired. If you’d like to learn and be inspired, check out www.colabdudley.net for what’s on and updates on all CoLab activities.
Marking Mental Health Awareness Week (16-22 May) Get Set to Go A message from James Austin, Sport Co-ordinator, Dudley Mind “Get Set to Go is a national project being run by the mental health charity Mind in conjunction with Sport England and is about helping people who would not normally be physically active or play sport to get the physical, social and mental wellbeing benefits that are associated with participating in sport and physical activity. The project relies on the input of our fantastic volunteers. The time and effort they have put in has been immense, and it would not be possible to run the project, let alone make it the success it has been without their help. It’s been great to be able to have someone to go to for help with the recruitment of volunteers, and Dudley CVS have helped us by always pointing potential volunteers in our direction as we have expanded the number of groups we run and people we support.” To read the full article, visit: http://wp.me/p2bnKg-2ua
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On volunteering for Dudley Mind A perspective from Mark Evans, Volunteer for Dudley Mind “I read about the project on the Dudley MIND website. The draw being it was a mental health activity project - something which being a service user myself really resonated with me. I wanted to be able to be involved in an interesting project, which Get Set to Go is, knowing that I'd be helping other people with mental health problems whilst helping myself by undertaking a new volunteer opportunity. I originally joined the project as an activity volunteer to help run the sports sessions and support service users. However, it soon became apparent to me that the project needed some marketing support and so with a marketing background I suggested that this is where I should focus my efforts. James agreed, and the rest as they say, is history. I enjoy working with James and the rest of the team at Dudley Mind and through the project I have also got to know colleagues from other organisations in Dudley which has been great. Volunteering has been a really positive personal development opportunity for me. It's given me more belief in myself. I certainly hope that I've helped make a difference through the marketing support I've provided to the project.” To read the full article, visit: http://wp.me/p2bnKg-2ue
News Dudley SOUP SOUP is a beautifully simple way of bringing people together and micro-funding creative community projects. Through CoLab Dudley a team has been convened who are very excited to bring SOUP to Dudley. At a SOUP dinner four projects pitch and one walks away with the money raised at that gathering. However usually all the projects get what they need. There are all sorts of connections, offers and exchanges made during a SOUP dinner – some of these might actually be more useful to a project than cash. SOUP was created by a group of artists in Detroit (detroitsoup.com), and now takes place in cities, towns and neighbourhoods all around the world. Dudley CVS Senior Development Officer Lorna has been really inspired by going to Birmingham SOUP (birminghamsoup.co.uk) which launched last year. Then in November Lorna and Anna Gillespie (now CEO of CHADD) had the opportunity to meet Amy Kaherl from Detroit SOUP while she was touring Europe. The open call for team members for Dudley SOUP drew together a group of 10 talented individuals, with experience in social enterprise, management, the arts, outreach, project management and more. Find Dudley SOUP at www.dudleysoup.com @dudley_soup on Twitter, Dudley SOUP on Facebook.
Microvolunteering To mark Microvolunteering Day on 15 April, Dudley CVS Volunteer Centre Development Officer Eileen posted her thoughts on microvolunteering on the Volunteer Centre blog. Eileen explains that microvolunteering is 'another name for a one-off volunteering opportunity, for those who haven't got much spare time, or are not ready to take on a fully-fledged volunteering role within an organisation.' Surprisingly there are lots of people who want this kind of opportunity, such as businesses who are looking to offer their staff a day off to volunteer. Others just simply can't fit a volunteering relationship into their lives, perhaps they work full time, are studying, or in some cases are not sure what they want to do, so want to try a few options to see what would be a good match. For more ideas about how to involve people in microvolunteering opportunities that could help your organisation to develop, visit tinyurl.com/jnc6nuc or get in touch with Eileen by emailing eileenfielding@dudleycvs.org.uk.
Recognise your volunteers this Volunteers Week! To mark Volunteers Week, Dudley CVS is giving out free Valued Volunteer certificates which you can use to thank your volunteers for the amazing work we do. Certificates can be collected from our office in Brierley Hill. To order yours, call Dale on 01384 573381.
The Charity Commission has launched a new registration service for organisations applying to become registered charities. It is much more user-friendly and easier to navigate. To use it, visit: tinyurl.com/j6yh7wb and to get support with registering, contact Becky on 01384 573381. The UK Civil Society Almanac 2016 is now available. Based on figures from 2013/14, it paints a complex picture of the state of the voluntary and community sector. The publication contains stats and facts around themes such as income, volunteers, workforce and spending. To view the data, visit: data.ncvo.org.uk
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And finally... A big ‘well done’ to Jason! On Sunday 24 April, Dudley CVS Locality Link Worker Jason conquered the London Marathon, raising £2,456 for Age UK. On deciding to run for Age UK, Jason said, “In my role with Integrated Plus I regularly come into contact with isolated people. Seeing the effect of loneliness made Age UK an obvious choice, knowing that they’re well versed in tackling such issues in a range of inclusive ways.” Jason continued, “The marathon was a wonderful experience, albeit tiring. My name was festooned across my Age UK Vest and I couldn’t run more than 25 meters without someone in the crowd calling out to me with words of encouragement. Tower Bridge and the Financial District were awe-inspiring highlights with a cacophony of crowd noise, but nothing compared to stopping for a quick cuddle with my wife and children at mile 22. My son wouldn’t let me go until he saw Iron Man run past, at which point he immediately forgot all about his father’s plight! I’d like to say a big thank you to everyone who sponsored me and for all the kind words of support I received along the way. I hope the money raised will go some way to help Age UK continue to offer an array of really valuable services.” Well done Jason!
This Echo was brought to you by…
Where you can find us
Dudley CVS team members
Dudley CVS office
Eileen Fielding, Volunteer Centre Development Officer Becky Pickin, Small Groups Development Officer Martin Jones, Funding Officer Kate Green, Integrated Plus Manager Chris Barron, Community and Volunteer Engagement Officer, Healthwatch Dudley Donna Roberts, support to Dudley CVS from Dudley MBC Lorna Prescott, Senior Development Officer Jason Griffiths, Locality Link Officer Dale Pickin, Administration Officer
With further contributions from Isabel Assaly, Regeneration Manager, The Churches Conservation Trust James Austin, Sport Co-ordinator, Dudley Mind Mark Evans, Volunteer, Dudley Mind
Dudley CVS is a registered charity and company limited by guarantee Place of registration: England Company number: 1998105 Charity number: 517766
7 Albion Street, Brierley Hill, DY5 3EE @DudleyCVS
facebook.com/cvsdudley
DY1 Stafford Street, Dudley, DY1 1RT To hire the venue, call Dale on 01384 573381 @dy1venue
Brierley Hill Civic Hall Bank Street, Brierley Hill, DY5 3DH To hire the venue, call James on 07801 710807 @bhillcivic
facebook.com/bhillcivic
bhillcivic.co.uk
Contact: Telephone: 01384 573381 Email: dale@dudleycvs.org.uk