I’ve started up a new Ning for (West Midlands) organisations and individuals (experienced and new) to collaborate, discuss and explore partnership work and funding. As a relatively new setup (albeit with some experience in bid writing), I know it can be somewhat daunting looking for the right information and people so maybe this could be hub for those links. I wasn’t sure whether to go ahead with setting it up as i’m aware of the increasing number of networks springing up everywhere. However, I haven’t seen anything specific which might spark things in the way i’m thinking. So, let’s give it a go and see what happens.

http://fusions.ning.com

Just a quick post to mention that our bid for a startup grant from UNLTD (as a social entrepreneur) was successful and we now have funding in place to deliver the taster sessions leading up to 2009. Many thanks to Tony Clabby, our development manager and the rest of the UNLTD staff for recognising the potential of our project and giving us this opportunity to get things moving swiftly.

A new Government white paper, Communities in Control, came out last week and in their own words…
“Communities in control: real people, real power aims to pass power into the hands of local communities. We want to generate vibrant local democracy in every part of the country, and to give real control over local decisions and services to a wider pool of active citizens.”
A few interesting things relating to our objectives, including the proposed £70 million Community Builders Fund available next year and some other third sector stuff. There’s a summary in PDF on the Govt’s Communities web site along with the full white paper and some bumph from Hazel Blears amongst other things.

One initial thought is whether we are reinventing the wheel here. Is this kind of thing already happening?

E-Skills UK is currently working on a 5 year strategic plan and the latest revision has some interesting stuff, only after a quick five minute scan, already there are loads of thoughts popping into my mind on how our proposed venture can tackle some of the issues raised. I’ve also found myself going “but what about this?” and “why don’t they talk about that?”. Anyway, i’ll post some more on the plan when I’ve had chance to have a good read.

There are many different avenues our project can take but from my own point of view, the E-Skills things seems pretty relevant and to answer my original question. ” What took us so long to get started?”