Tuesday, 24 April 2007

More technical difficulties

I arrived at work to find that Sha-Lee had stayed late to overcome the last technical difficulties of the mailmerge.

I started the day by “hitting the print button”. My printer chugged and spluttered and lay silent for twenty minutes, then churned out twenty letters and then crashed. This tedious cycle repeated itself for several hours before things finally settled down and the letters began to appear. Shortly after lunch, it was a real pleasure to see that the printing had completed.

Piled up on Sha-Lee’s desk were 420 membership forms (two sheets of A4 printed on two sides and folded into an A5 booklet), 420 flyers advertising forthcoming events at WCVS, 420 merged covering letters, 420 pre-paid return envelopes, and 420 outgoing window envelopes. Sha-Lee (being part time) had completed her hours for the week and was back at college, but in the next few days I will surely find some kind soul to stuff 420 envelopes.

A community respose to Hate Crime

In the afternoon, we hosted a meeting for the Sunflower Centres on A community response to Hate Crime across West Herts (the three areas of Watford, Dacorum and Three Rivers). Something more than twenty people attended and all but three were from Watford; there is a major problem that people will simply not travel for meetings.

The Home Office has a clear definition of Hate Crime: Any incident constituting a criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person as being motivated by prejudice or hate.

Hate crime can include physical assault, damage to property, offensive graffiti, arson, abusive or obscene telephone calls, malicious complaints, offensive leaflets and posters, and bullying at school or in the workplace. People might be victims not only because of their colour but also (for example) because of their religion, sexual orientation, or disability.

Thankfully, these are not common crimes. But they are extremely dangerous and the community response ought to reflect a deep abhorence for such hatred and intolerance.

Yasmin Batliwala chaired the meeting very well and WCVS was represented by Vanessa (our Development and Training Officer), two trustees (Althea McLean OBE and Sylvia Harvey), and occasionally myself. At the end, there was clear agreement on setting up a Hate Crimes forum reporting to the Police’s already existing Independent Advisory Group.

Community development

Unfortunately, I missed most of this meeting because I was meanwhile meeting with Sarah Pinnock and Kathryn Robson of WBC to consider the process of drawing up a Community Development Strategy for Watford.

In Watford, a lot is happening that ought to feed into a coherent strategy, but at present it is all a little too fragmented. Sarah, Kathryn and I had each done quite a bit of research, and much of it focused on the “beacon” local authority of Blyth Valley.

But there is a potentially vast area to address: we all had lots of questions, very few answers, and none of us knew where the parameters are. How do community development and citizens’ engagement and social cohesion fit together? Or are they all the same thing? What about the handover of council housing to the new Watford Community Housing Trust? What about the Community Gateway? Sport and health? Refugee Gateway status? Passing over council-run Community Centres to local voluntary control? Transfer of assets? A neighbourhoods strategy? Consultation processes? Disability Forum? Minority Ethnic Forum? Equalities Panel? Youth Council? Women’s Centre? Senior Citizen’s Forum? One Watford LSP? The Mayor? Local Councillors? Voluntary Sector development? WBC tendering and procurement? Compact?

Kathryn, Sarah and I agreed that the next step should be to engage other key people in a brainstorming session so we can identify what is already happening and how it all ought to fit together.

Trustees

In the evening, I worked to finalise papers for next week’s WCVS trustees’ meeting. Most difficult was producing financial reports without a bookkeeper or finance officer. The papers were finally e-mailed off at about 10:30 pm.

I left the office shortly after to find that during the evening, Watford had been surrounded by roadworks. No diversions were signposted, there were just lots of roads closed and lots of flashing lights. I drove around for half an hour before I managed to find a route that wasn’t blocked off.

Home at last

On arriving home at midnight, I found that Jackie had recorded for me BBC’s dramatisation of Diary of a Nobody. Crikey, rumbled!