June 18, 2014
It’s easy, it’s cheap and it works
One of the principle reasons we set up the Scottish Community Alliance was to encourage more cooperation and understanding across the community sector. One of the simplest and cheapest ways of doing this is to assist community groups visit other communities where something of interest to them is happening. Not so long ago, we had a Knowledge and Skills Exchange Fund that enabled groups to do just this. If ever there was a low cost/high return investment this was it. The decision to discontinue funding for this sector-wide resource seems retrograde.
18/6/14
Extracts from a random selection of the monitoring reports provided by recipients of the previous Knowledge and Skills Fund…..
• The key impact to our organisation was to give us new ideas for setting up our social enterprise, including good use of space, the use of efficient heaters and how to make a building attractive…the visit opened our eyes to the options available to us….we found the people we visited very inspiring…great to see what can be achieved with the right people, the right building and the right vision
• As a result of our two groups making this visit jointly, it provided a platform for us to share ideas, hopes and fears about our proposed joint project. We have been able to bond much more easily as a result. Trust has been built. We all came back from the visit, excited and motivated – something which we have held onto during our meetings to help us focus (on the new project)
• Very inspirational trip. We have made lots of friends and contacts for the future….helped us feel that we were not alone in what we are going through….
• The visit provided inspiration and the belief that we could succeed…we became convinced that the solution to our problem lay in a community share issue `
…….almost without exception the evaluation and monitoring forms that were collated by DTAS on behalf of all SCA networks contained comments such as these.