I am writing to let you know that it has been decided to postpone a series of events in June and July that you will have by now received an invite to. Some of you have already responded and made a booking.
The first event was due to be this Thursday, 18th June, to begin to discuss the forthcoming review of the community development service across Worthing and Adur. Across East & West Sussex, there are at least two other events happening that day that key people in the voluntary and community sector will be attending. Given it is important for some of those people to attend the Adur & Worthing events so that we can have a broad enough range of contributions, it is sensible to postpone.
On further reflection, the series of events planned are maybe not the best process for supporting community development work in Adur & Worthing as it is clear that there are different approaches to community development and these identities to be maintained, not simply merged.
However working together to discover commonalities and encourage greater cross sector and cross geographical working to share practice & information is a crucial component to productive community development.
We are therefore proposing to gather a small representative group of people together to begin to look at designing a more appropriate process for reviewing community development and empowerment activities and services which will bring together colleagues and more importantly meet the needs and aspirations of our communities. Once this draft framework for future working is done we can develop a programme of activities to achieve it.
We will be holding an initial meeting of this group on 6th July, 12-3, venue to be confirmed.
Minutes of this meeting and other information regarding community development in Worthing and Adur can be found on this website, where you are welcome and encouraged to make comments and express your views on community development.
John Stevens,
Community Development South East