Friday 25 April 2014

"It's the Young People....."

We’ve been working on papers for our Trustee Board next week, including end of year financial and business plan out-turns. The high spots include a big increase in website views, over 2,500 followers on Twitter and nearly 4,000 Views of this Blog, so thank you! I realise this is not quite Stephen Fry or Barack Obama blog territory, but it is encouraging.

We’ve made arrangements for the Charities Evaluation Service Pqasso assessor to make her peer review assessment of us for the Level 2 Award, and this will happen in early June. Quietly confident as I have said before; the process is a good one and forced us to identify and rectify some weaknesses as part of a constant process of making improvements in all we do.

Went to West Sussex County Council on Wednesday to talk to their head of youth services about the possibility of running a conference for the voluntary youth sector in that county as part of the legacy arrangements we have inherited from our now defunct sister organisation there. WSCC are at the early stages of moving to commissioning for outcomes whilst Surrey CC is embarking on its second complete cycle. The difference between the two authorities is very marked. WSCC has £ zero grants/contracts with the vol youth sector, so here in Surrey we are fortunate, though we may not always feel it. We agreed to hold a conference in West Sussex in November about gaps/shortfalls  that might be appearing after two years of zero spend in the sector – a needs analysis.

I had an intense day yesterday writing reports for the Board and getting the papers out…my 7.45 am start, and then went rather wearily to Eikon’s First Annual Awards evening, held at the very plush Sony hq offices in Weybridge.

I was so glad I went, for It was an amazing event, celebrating the achievements of  disadvantaged young people. Truly remarkable young people: the young man whose parents separated..then his best friend died..then his mum died..and now he’s all of 16/17. Then another young man who had a troubled and abusive family life ..went to court and the next day went back to school to take his GCSE exams at which he did very well, and so on. A great tribute was paid to the work of Eikon and to its founder and CEO Chris Hickford who proudly, and rightly leads a wonderful organisation that does very committed work with these young people.  For it’s always about the young people …. 
          Mike

No comments:

Post a Comment