📣Are you passionate about supporting communities experiencing poverty and inequality to be able to take social action on issues they feel passionate about? Do you recognise that climate justice is essential for communities experiencing poverty and inequality in the UK?

🌠 We are in exciting times! All One Collective & Lab CIC is looking for new organisational Directors (voluntary positions similar to charity trustee) to take the organisation to the next level in organisational development – from a start-up staffed by freelancers with a range of small project funding, to an organisation with robust governance and accountability, salaried positions, increased profile, connections and networks and a sustainability plan.

🏞 All1C is in the process of submitting the second phase of a National Lottery funding bid for a 4-year project, which means we are in exciting times and it feels as if an initial scale up of our work is just around the corner! And so we are looking for inspirational people to help us with the next phase of our development and journey as an organisation.

⚖ The needs of poor and unequal communities have to be addressed in the development of climate action plans, and we are looking for some inspirational Director’s to help us do that.

📖 Please find more information in the uploaded Director’s Information Pack.  All1C Director Role Information Pack Final

🖥 And please share if you think you have contacts that might be interested in supporting our work.

Many thanks! 🙏

 

It’s June 2022 and we (Hilary and Roisin) have been delivering support to communities in Calderdale since 2017. And so we are considering our next steps including our strategic priorities and the social impact that we really want to make. We know this much that everything has to evolve and change, and All One Collective is no different.

 

But if we had to tell the story of our work so far, we think we would say…

 

• We worked hard to get the right people in the room. By ‘right’ we mean a diverse representation of community experience and voices. Ensuring people from a range of backgrounds participate in a project is a piece of work in its own right. If you actually want the people who might find it challenging to attend to turn up, you need to go and speak to those people, relate, show empathy, build trust – a poster and a flyer doesn’t do this. Representative community engagement starts with filling the room with a range of different lived experiences. At All1C since 2017, we’ve prioritised this and have been rewarded with getting to build relationships with some inspiring people.

 

• We provided a space for communities to identify challenges they and their community were facing. Its sounds obvious but often whilst communities are actively experiencing a range of different challenges, they need a safe and facilitated space to articulate their lived experience. Once a person names the issue (s) the next step is looking at the root causes and the systems, policies and practices that underpin the social issues – a first step towards undertaking social action

 

• We embedded knowledge and understanding around self-care into all our community support. We are living in unprecedented times of social isolation and disconnection and many people at all different ages and in all different groups are not feeling well. If you’re not feeling well and your mental health is poor, it is almost impossible to be able to take social actions that can help create community and societal change. And so we make sure that all our participants leave our programmes with developed self-care tools that they can take into their lives and community work.

 

• We helped people to dig deep into active citizenship, analysing inequality and power and developing practical skills needed for social action project design. Community members are the experts in terms of challenges and solutions they face but often need support to help shape and design action that will create sustainable social change.

 

• We stayed true to our original intention – bringing people together from different backgrounds. We continued to focus on helping people to build connections and relationships with people with whom they have no natural contact points, and in some cases people and groups with whom society has pitted them against. The learning from this work cannot really be put into words but the connections and conversations have been rich and deep and have without exception reinforced the need for this work.

 

• We have accepted that climate change is ‘the’ issue of our time, but we feel strongly that the debate and the narrative remains firmly in the hands of the privileged. The repercussions of this being that the solutions being developed will not meet the needs of the poor or the ‘just about managing’ families, exemplified by the rush to build the infrastructure for electric charging points at the same time as the ongoing deprioritisation of free or cheap integrated public transport systems.

The ongoing segregation of organisations working on community development and those working on climate change means  that work and projects with communities are often seen seen as either making a social impact or an environmental impact – a false dichotomy that does not serve our communities. Going forward it means that at All1C we understand very clearly the risk as an organisation if we don’t use community engagement and our skills and experience around active citizenship to address climate justice issues.

And so we promise that we will try to move All1C to the next stage of its evolution and story around climate justice and active citizenship which means we need more resources to:

• enable us to facilitate robust community-led influencing of systems, policy and practice;
• increase our strategic influencing work and networking;
• develop further our impact monitoring and evaluation;
• increase our ability to undertake reflective practice, to document and record learning, and to communicate around our work which includes convening learning spaces for wider VCS networks.

Watch this space…

 

‘Waste not want not’ was a family focused community event in Lee Mount which was held on Saturday 30th October 2021. The aims of the event:

To deliver interactive and fun awareness raising activities on the local environment and climate change, and to create conversations helping people in the community to develop community-based solutions to important issues

Continue reading “Waste Not Want Not!”

Here is the final report of the Covid Responder’s Learning Exchanges funded by Awards for All, National Lottery. We really hope it’s a useful read…

Final Report – Learning Exchanges for Covid Response & Recovery – funded by Awards For All

 

 

All One Collective & Lab will be holding a programme of Learning Exchanges funded by the National Lottery aimed at workers and volunteers that have continued to support local communities during Covid-19 over the last year.

Dates: April 20^th, 27^th; May 4^th, 11^th, 18^th & 25th

Day: Tuesday

Time: 10-12.00

Format: Zoom

It has been a really hard time for people and organisations directly supporting communities and yet so many have gone above and beyond to meet the wide range of needs identified whether supporting people with food parcels, collecting prescriptions, digital access and knowledge, company and fun activities, adult education, training and employment support and on and on.

We would like to provide a space to reflect on your learning from the last year. To do this we will providing some great speakers as a stimulus for some small group discussions.

You can some to as many sessions that you think are relevant to you and anybody working or volunteering with communities is welcome.

To book on a session, please go to the following Eventbrite link:

https://all1c-learningexchange.eventbrite.co.uk

The sessions are as follows:

• April 20^th: Partnership – how we can maximise our reach and impact through effective partnerships?

Speaker: Jayne Leech, VSI Alliance

• April 27^th: Working with the public sector – how can we work more effectively with the public sector ?

Speakers: Sian Rogers

• May 4^th: Using the arts to promote positive mental health – case-study Verd De Gris

Speaker: Jeff Turner, Verd De Gris

• May 11^th: Health Inequalities – what are the indicators of health inequalities, what have we learned through Covid-19?

Speaker: Jo Bibby, Health Foundation

• May 18^th: Active Citizenship during the pandemic, what does it look like locally and globally?

Speakers: Adelle A’asante  Lightup BAHC; Jan Lymer Calder Community Cares & Active Citizen’s Bangladesh

• May 25^th: Community recovery – what has Covid taught us and what do our communities need going forward?

Speaker: Dr Kaya Davies Hayon, Belong Network