Community Unity
A Community Volunteer pilot project undertaking a range of development activities and delivering practical training to existing community groups and local volunteers.
As public services continue to shrink, local voluntary and community groups have been stepping in, often providing replacement services better tailored to their community’s needs. In this project we’ll work with our pilot communities to build a lightweight structure that will encourage further unity within each area, and the sharing of best practice across the three communities.
We’ll be working with three pilot communities, Holsworthy, Lynton and Lynmouth, and South Molton, undertaking a range of development activities and delivering practical training to existing community groups and local volunteers. They’ve been chosen as they represent a range of population sizes, geographical spread, and location in relation to major towns and infrastructure.
An initial audit, run with the support of the local councils, will determine activity levels of existing voluntary groups, community activists and other support networks. Once mapped, we’ll work to bring these groups together, encouraging them to share knowledge, links, and resources.
The project structure will encourage them to think of themselves as a unified team, ready and able to assist their friends and neighbours with support across a wide range of opportunities and issues. It will also equip them with the tools and skills required to make them better prepared and resilient to events such as freak weather, or minor emergencies such as power cuts.
We’ll help each community develop and strengthen its links with the statutory bodies, agencies and blue-light services that already serve them. Some of whom will also provide training and access to facilities for the project teams, for the overall benefit of the community.
The project is a pilot to test the concept for a potential future roll out across the whole of Devon and Cornwall. It will run for fifteen months and is supported by the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner and Devon and Cornwall Police, in support of their Citizens in Policing Strategy.
ARE YOU TAKING PART IN OUR KNOCK FOR YOUR NEIGHBOUR SCHEME? COMPLETE YOUR ONLINE PLEDGE HERE.
This project has now ended. You can read all about the projects impact from the report below:
