Developing a Sustainable Community

A partnership of Southlanders and WE A plans to pilot a project that aims to show community/residents group how they can map a communities' needs and resources with the aim of identifying and developing skills within the local community.

This approach is in line with local, national government strategies to develop sustainable communities and is intended to provide a template for sustainable leisure and learning opportunities for residents of the whole of Adur and perhaps beyond

The project has a number of stages                                                   

·        A co-ordinator from the Community will be retained to ensure that project remains focussed on schedule, on budget and as a central point of contact for all partners

·        A series of local events and a community mail shot will be undertaken to:

              provide information on the project 

              recruit volunteers to assist with the project

                      provide information about a range of support that will be on offer to

                     volunteers to support them during the "life of the project and beyond"

·        People who indicate a interest in the project will be invited to attend a course to develop their skills to enable them to construct a survey to audit community needs and resources. The contents of this course will cover such subjects as, door step questionnaires, focus groups, interviews techniques how to analyse data, how to develop a database and how to present findings.

·         A survey will be developed and circulated to all residents in Southlanders catchment area and information collated and analysed and a database is established. The survey will be able to be completed both online and by hand and deposited at local shops etc.

A report of the findings of the survey will be produces and a series of events will be organised to disseminate findings of the survey to the wider community. These events will also identify individuals to take areas of interest forward. Partners from voluntary, community, employment, training and learning will be included in these events.

   A series of courses/ and formation of special interest groups will be developed when the level of need is assessed based on the newly developed database. It is intended that where possible local volunteers will be recruited to run special interest groups (e.g., reading group, promoting health,) will receive training in facilitation/leadership skills and then run taster sessions for the community.

The WEA will provide two levels of training to enable them to reach these objectives:

1.       Train the co-ordinator and volunteers to map community needs and identify resources. This course would include: exploring ways to map needs, address issues of inequality and diversity, analyse data, build a database, how to present findings. This course will include a session on identifying learner's own progression needs.

2.       To teach learners 'Facilitation/Leadership skills' to enable them to run

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