· Giving your time for free? Let us know how you would like to celebrate volunteering week this June
· www.lovecatford.co.uk is now live – check it out now and find out ways you can help us develop the site
· Upcoming assembly fund – shall we do things differently this year?
· Much more besides
Minutes:
Website update and call for volunteers - Website group
Cllr Amrani introduced the Catford South Assembly website and stated he would like to commend the web team and volunteers all on the excellent work they have done
Gareth Newton Williams presented the following
These Assembly meetings happen irregularly, they are complicated and expensive to put on, you have to sit through agenda items that you don’t necessarily care about to get to the thing that matter to you. Although these meetings are an important forum and we don’t want to lose them, we wanted to try and modernise the experience of people in Catford South where they can find out about important things happening in their area, find out more about issues that matter to them and for it to be more responsive to the changing needs of the community. So we created www.lovecatford.co.uk
There is now a twitter account @Love_Catford to engage with people about the things they want to see
This is what the website looks like – Gareth showed people a number of pages
The website went live in January. It is still very new. It is starting to pick up steam. It has ‘pages’ which are fixed pieces of info, such as the local amenities local groups, history and so on. Part of the idea is that people who are new to the area can find out about things happening in their community right away, rather than hearing about things over a number of years through word of mouth. This is where the static pages are used and give information about permanent things such as schools, library community groups and so on.
There are then ‘posts’ about things going on things that are happening or have recently happened. If you are involved in something - you have a reading club for example - you can post things about what you are doing, there is an events calendar so people can post their own events. You can all help organise yourself in one hub place so you are reaching the whole community not just people specifically searching for a reading club
People are reaching out, we are averaging about 100 visits per day but that is unique visitors, a month ago it was 50 people a day now it’s a 100. For every 2 people that come to the website one of those is finding something of interest and clicking on it – this will only increase over time as the content develops and more people become involved in adding items of interest
We get information about what people are interested in. the most viewed page was of course the home page but the Catford tower article was the second most popular piece of content, next was this assembly meeting. The news page is a feed of all that is posing and this is also viewed a lot.
We have made it very straightforward, it is free technology so it is a very cheap implementation and it depends on community content. Gareth gave a quick demonstration about how easy it is to add a post onto the website – he put a ‘post’ up about fixmystreet.com mentioned earlier in the fly tipping section of the meeting - to encourage people to get involved is owned by the Catford south community, no need to ask for permission, just do it.
The web group is a very small group at the moment we need more people to get involved. There are more people that will look at the website today than are in this meeting. So please get involved and help us!
The council run a number of different projects and as it was pointed out that people can participate in their own time in their own way - engage in a consultation in your own time in your own home, this is one of the ways you can do that.
Lucy Stated that If we can do this with no experience at all, you can do it to. We can provide training to help volunteers get more involved with the site so please do sign up to help.
Cllr Amrani stated We really need to commend Gareth and the sub group. Thank you
Engaging in Volunteer Week - Barbara Gray
1st to the 12th of June, think its an important week a lot of the stuff the at happens here in CATOFRD south is done by local people that live here, as volunteers.
We are very proactive here and the range of skills is amazing. For Volunteering week, we are hoping to do some work about the and celebrate ourselves, shows the level of commitment in this area, there are lots of opportunities for people to get involved, Catford film festival, Outdoor film showing of Grease, done by a volunteer, the website, hopefully an afternoon tea. We need photographers, bloggers, tweeters, digital buddies to help older people. There is a huge range of opportunities for people to share their skills, get involved and make their area even better.
Barbara stated that there is a table at the back of the room, please take the time to sign up if you are interested in getting more involved in volunteering - we have a shop local card that it given to volunteers to get a discount at shops all over the borough.
Additional info - Volunteer week is so big it has out grown its name!
This year volunteer week will run from the 1st to the 12th of June 2016!
The Assembly would like to help you all get involved with volunteer based activities during this period, be it a community clean-up, play outside day, or a big lunch.
If you would like to do anything to celebrate your local volunteers and maybe recruit some new ones, please let us know.
We can help you by
· Helping you contact the right people and planning
· supporting you through advertising in print and on the website
· helping you find more volunteers
· working with groups to get a Catford South programme of events happening
Useful websites for
volunteering:
Volunteer Centre Lewisham: http://www.volunteercentrelewisham.org.uk
020 8613 7113kay@volunteercentrelewisham.org.uk
Community Development Lead – CENF Barbara Gray raekinda@hotmail.co.uk
The Big Lunch official websitewww.thebiglunch.com
Team Londonwww.volunteerteam.london.gov.uk
Rushey Green Time Bankwww.rgtb.org.uk
Lewisham Local Contributor Cardwww.lewishamlocal.org.uk
Barbara was asked to speak about the crowd funding initiatives currently happening on Space Hive –
Spacehive is a crow funding website. The idea is someone comes up with a project idea, it will be costed then people can pledge money to support it. From as little as 2 pounds or as much as they like. Good Food Catford was done by Spacehive. We now have a lovely café in Sandhurst Parade because the community supported it. There are 4 up for crowd funding at the moment, artists hub is up at the moment, as is Catford film festival, afternoon tea for older people, to provide something for older residents and the Children’s lantern parade, working with children and families.
These are the 4 that have come out of the Catford South local community at the moment - they are on Spacehive now and please support them.
Additional Information: There are things all of us can do to improve community wellbeing, from getting to know our neighbours to supporting local activities. Catford South residentsare fund raising through Spacehive, in conjunction with Lewisham council, to raise funds for a number of local events. They need the support of local community.
If you can pledge towards the projects they would be delighted
www.spacehive.com/catford-film-festival
www.spacehive.com/catford-arts-trail
www.spacehive.com/catford-south-kids-lantern-parade
Contact: Barbara Gray - raekinda@hotmail.co.uk or call 07882 270159