Tuesday, 9 December 2008

The Herts Voluntary Emergency Committee (part of Hertfordshire Resilience) met today at County Hall. Each member is asked to sign a “Memorandum of Understanding” saying what services they could offer in the event of some undefined civic emergency. Should it be necessary to establish a Humanitarian Aid Centre in the aftermath of an emergency, then the local CVSs should be central to running such a centre. This is something I need to take back to my colleagues at the Herts CVS group.

From County Hall I drove to Stevenage for a meeting on the Herts BME Advocacy service. We finally agreed the protocol governing referrals between ourselves and HCC’s Minority Ethnic Curriculum Support Services. But so far we have received only one referral from MECSS so we also need to work with many other sources too.

Afterwards, I applied to the NCVO for a free governance review and made arrangements for our trustees’ review day in January corresponding with our facilitator Helen Marini. On the issue of governance I also talked to different members of the Herts BME Partnership which has huge potential as a major force for good in the county but which is going through some hard times.