inter faith training for Connexions staff

While she was at our National Inter Faith Week exhibition in Highcross yesterday afternoon, Chogma (Education Outreach Officer at the Nagarjuna Kadampa Buddhist Centre) said, "I'll see you tomorrow at the training for Connexions." I replied, "What?" She didn't have much more information than that, but I couldn't let it lie. I phone Connexions around 1600 and eventually got put through to the member of staff organising what's virtually a day-long event for the organisation's staff. Jacqui Wittingham sounds pleased to hear from me and is glad to give me a table to display our wares at the event and give me a half hour slot in the programme to introduce the Council of Faiths.

I get the Council of Faiths original pop-up banner out of mothballs, with a handful of freebies and head to Halford House in Charles Street, where the training event is being held in the basement. Staff appear and disappear, fitting visits downstairs around breaks in their work schedules. Numbers vary from 20-odd at one point to hardly more than half a dozen at another.

When I arrive, they're in the middle of a presentation on diversity in African culture. This is followed by a staff member speaking about Ibiza 24/7, a Christian prayer mission working with holiday makers in Ibiza. then we're taught a gospel song. I'm on next, and make a pretty good case (if I do say so myself) that any training or awareness-raising activity in Leicester should involve the Council of Faiths. Then I have to dash back to Highcross in time for the visit to our exhibition by Sir Peter Soulsby MP.

volunteering strategy working group (1)

A quick dash across the road from Leicestershire Centre for Integrated Living (LCIL) to Voluntary Action Leicester (VAL) for the first meeting of a small group working on bashing out a strategy for volunteering that will work in both city and county. This follows on from a paper presented by Jim McCallum of VAL at the most recent meeting of the Stronger Communities Partnership (see blog entry, 08 Apr). Since I gained some experience in this area when helping with Volunteering England's "Volunteering and Faith Communities" project last year, I put myself forward to be on this group. Although Jim had a copy of the report of that project to hand when he presented that paper in April, I wasn't convinced that the benefits of that project had been included in the proposed strategy, an omission that I wanted to help put right (particularly in relation to the rich experience and potential of Leicester's faith communities).

There are five of us round the table, for this one-hour meeting: two from VAL (including Jim who leads the discussion), Jai Parmar, Project Officer from the Equality and Diversity Partnership (EDP), Jade Walsh (Volunteer Coordinator at Vista), Suna Tilley (Side-by-Side Service Manager at the Alzheimer's Society), and David Smith from Connexions.

We take one topic and brainstorm it: How to inspire people in Leicester and Leicestershire to volunteer. WE come up with 20 or more idea worth noting. They'll be written up, shared with the group, then each of us can circulate them within our own "hinterland" (as Jim put it) and come back for another meeting, to brainstorm another of the strategy's five principles in our second meeting next month. We're hoping to finalise the strategy by October at the latest.