Tuesday morning I had a meeting with Graham one of the community organisers working in Tulse Hill. We had a lots of work to do around the up coming EGM for the Tulse Hill Forum. Graham, six-foot 30-year-old young man from Stretton has been working as a community organiser in Tulse Hill for the past two years. High trees community trust started off employing three community organisers with funding and supports from Locality http://locality.org.uk/projects/community-organisers/. The role of the community organisers has been one of listening to local people and creating networks so that local people can mobilise themselves into collective action.
High Tree Community Trust and the community organisers have been very supportive and encouraging of the work that Tulse Hill Forum have done in the past two years. They have helped us mobilise our community it will be responsive to developing a neighbourhood plan application . With the Community organisers help we successfully conducted stage one consultation around the application with local residents being trained up with skills On listening.
Although Tuesday I was not expecting to spend all day with Graham and Jerayma I did. Working with them is very inspiring as their role is to get local people active in the area to improve their surroundings and make a difference. In the morning I did work with Graham to create a community link map which would help us show the links our group has created locally. In the afternoon Graham and Jarayma had their monthly online supervision which was a group chat with other community organisers around the country. I of course sat quietly continuing to work on our mapping exercise. Being that I was in The same room as the supervision was being conducted I was privy to the online conversation. This scheme of work seem so converts and on the cover it reminded me of something from James Bond. Community organisers from all over the country won't give me an upda on the work they were doing in their communities. All the organisers in online chat were involved at different stages in neighbourhood planning. Throughout the session they updated each other on the work they were doing in their respective areas, they discussed the positive and negative's of what they were finding , And gave responses to the training sessions they had previously had around what was " neighbourhood planning". Each organiser gave helpful feedback and suggestions on situations that were being discussed.
It was fascinating to see how across the country there were more people like Graham and Jerayma Who have been put in place to help our communities develop. I wonder if locality will be re-run in this community organisers position again across the country. For me personally I feel Tulse Hill may never have got to this stage in neighbourhood planning if we did not have the assistance of the community organisers. I feel that this service should be more widely duplicated across the country. With councils being forced to relinquish Their services and the community being forced either to abandon locally run community services or take a more active role to assure continuation of local activities, we need a certain level of organisation and direction that will support communities to move these initiatives forward.
Not only has our Group been helped develop our skills with the help of the community organisers but other groups have been mobilise with the work putting and assistance of the community organisers. St Martin's Estate after many years of trying have now got a new Tenants residents association active in their area. Cressingham Gardens Estate amongst all that upheaval of proposed demolition of their homes have been encouraged through the community organisers to divert some energy on creating A book club stall on their estates. Graham and his team of now just one other person, Jerayma are helping create some powerful links in our area. Local people are being upskilled and given the confidence to run their own community ventures. This is a very powerful tool. This is really the way forward. This is really The ingredients that is needed to create stronger more resilience communities.
