Thursday, 3 July 2008

I started the day by visiting HCC’s brand new offices in Stevenage for a meeting with Multi Ethnic Curriculum Support Services. My journey was not helped by the fact that the offices have been awarded their own new postcode - which means that multimap.co.uk doesn’t yet know where it is and allocates the location randomly somewhere the other side of Stevenage, which made for an interesting journey and a delayed start. We were there to agree protocols for Hema’s work as our BME Advocate. Hema and I emphasised that our priority was to protect the Advocacy Service’s independence from schools and HCC, and this was readily agreed and Karin of MECSS agreed to prepare draft some protocols.

Back in Watford I met with Angelo and Maria to review launch plans for our big IT project: mywatford.net as the first training events are scheduled for 29 July. The technology is looking fabulous - but there are still some security problems and some design work and lots and lots of data entry required.

I also spoke with Andrew Burt of HCC about the county-wide conference we are putting together for 29 October with the theme: Public partnership and public law: creating the environment for a thriving third sector in Hertfordshire. This could be a great conference - but we need to secure a venue and start promoting the event!

In the evening I was in Hatfield for a meeting of the Advisory Board for the BME Advocacy Service. The panel comprises eleven people and we had received 2-3 apologies, so the turnout of only two was pretty disappointing - even allowing for the torrential rain at the scheduled start time. But we work with who’s there and one important lesson in life is that 99% of decisions are taken by people who actually turn up. One of our most important decisions was that next time we will meet during office hours rather than in the evening.

Big News

The Big News today was that the Hertfordshire Community Foundation learned that it had been successful in its bid to manage the Grassroots Grants programme in Hertfordshire. This is excellent news for Watford CVS as we shall soon have £30,000 to distribute in small grants to local groups. The only criteria are that groups have to have produced at least one annual report and to have annual turnover of less than £20k. This excludes a large number of groups, but we shall have to work hard to ensure that the money finds a welcoming and industrious home.