Wednesday, 7 March 2007

At the end of the working day, I returned to the office and had a very helpful meeting with Zamir Shah of Anjuman-E-Jaafariya, talking about WCVS services and the forthcoming meeting on the possible creation of a Watford World Forum.

Safer Watford

But I spent most of today at the Watford Ramada Hotel atttending the Safer Watford conference. This proved far more interesting and helpful than I could have anticipated.

But first some sad truths: the lighting in the main hall was so poor that I bumped into stray pieces of furniture and could recognise no-one, the “break-out” rooms were at least three miles from the main hall (I exaggerate for comic effect), there were no signs, and the hotel staff seemed overwhelmed by the conference. And the wheelchair lift was “out of order”. And there were persistent technical problems with some of the presentations. And only a small proportion of the speakers had the feintest idea how to design a PowerPoint presentation.

Despite all these failings, I found the event very useful. Why?

Because the subject as a whole is relatively new to me? Because there was a thought-provoking presentation on The Threat of Terrorism? Because I learnt about Watford Football Club's Positive Futures project? Because there was an excellent key note speech from John Grieve (and he introduced me to a new useful word: consilient: the agreement of two or more inductions drawn from different sets of data)?

All helped. But mostly I think I was grateful to be alerted to the huge potential for voluntary and community engagement in this agenda.

I deliberately write potential because this is an agenda in which Watford’s voluntary and community sector is currently under performing. Of course there are noble exceptions (the Domestic Violence Forum, West Herts Against Crime, Victim Support, HACRO, and so on), but the voluntary and community sector as a whole could contribute far more to this agenda.

Why don't they?