BACKGROUND
The Edinburgh Community Learning and Development Partnership (ECLDP) have taken the following three national priorities:
- Achievement through learning for adults
- Achievement through learning for children and young people
- Achievement through building community capacity
as the foundations for the development of Edinburgh's strategic framework for CLD, entitled "Confident Creative Citizens & Communities" (2005-2008).
Edinburgh Voluntary Organisations' Council (EVOC www.evoc.org.uk) and the Volunteer Centre Edinburgh (VCE www.volunteeredinburgh.org.uk) are the voluntary sector representative members on the ECLDP. Voluntary sector engagement and representation regarding CLD requires further focus and development, and as such is regarded as a national issue. EVOC and VCE secured a small grant under the Learning Connections fund of Communities Scotland with a view to working to support increased involvement of voluntary organisations in the realm of CLD and CLD planning, and to facilitate improved profiling of existing CLD structures and initiatives.
Click here to read "Confident Creative Citizens & Communities (2005-2008)"
CLD MICROSITE
The recently launched Edinburgh Compact website and directory (www.edinburghcompact.org.uk) is structured so as to serve as an information portal for voluntary sector organisations. With this in mind, it was anticipated that use of the site's microsite function to create a hub for information sharing and dissemination with respect to CLD would be of benefit to voluntary organisations, and would present opportunity to work together to further enhance communication e.g. through building of online discussion forums/ creation of remote access electronic community noticeboards. This CLD microsite houses much possibility for further development and use, and interested parties should contact, in the first instance Manju at EVOC (manju@evoc.org.uk), to discuss their ideas. Should you wish to upload meeting minutes or other related CLD documents to this section, or if you are part of a network or forum that is interested in devising a microsite, you may also contact Manju at the above email address.
CLD EVENTS JUNE 2006
Two CLD awareness raising seminars were held during June 2006. Burning questions resound around how local voluntary organisations can better link with city-wide strategic groupings such as the Edinburgh Partnership and so inform, define and drive forward CLD plans. The South Edinburgh seminar focused strongly on profiling new and existing structures in the community, looking at the evolving new departmental bodies, implications for service delivery and fit to the city-wide CLD strategy. The South Edinburgh CLD Plan expired at the end of March 2006 and participants had the opportunity to sound out how the next plan would be progressed. Explanation of city and local partnerships, a summary of the Strategy and tips on how to profile yourself within the Strategy and show how you were contributing to and driving forward the strategy, were part and parcel of the day. The CLD hub was show-cased and three voluntary sector groups came forward with a desire to setup microsites for their respective forums/ networks.
On a different slant, the West Edinburgh event focused specifically on the work of the ECLDP and the West Edinburgh Community Learning Partnership, with the mainstay of the event being that of in-depth group work, where voluntary organisations reviewed their own involvement at local and citywide level, and specifically highlighted local issues that they believe are not being picked up on, and so not reflected through the city-wide Strategy.
Community Learning & Development
