Tag Archives: community engagement

£eith Chooses Community Discussion Meeting!

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All members of the Leith community, or with an interest in participatory budgeting, are invited to an online community meeting on Tuesday 10th November at 18:30 – 20:00 (max). Get the link from Eventbrite.

Because £eith Chooses 2020/2021 will be a bit different from previous years, we’d like to catch everybody up with the news of how it will run. We want to be as transparent as possible and to give everybody the chance to ask questions and chat about things.

We’d also like to report back the results of the recent £eith Chooses survey. It was fantastic that so many people took the trouble to respond, we really appreciate it. Not all of the suggestions can be implemented, this time round anyway, but it would be good to air and discuss the ideas.

To get the link, and attend, please register with Eventbrite:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/eith-chooses-online-community-discussion-meeting-tickets-127231216995

The meeting will be via the (free) Microsoft Teams platform

See you online!

£eith Chooses 2021 – it’s happening!

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Many thanks to all who responded to our recent survey. What a rich and heart-warming show of care, commitment, and bright ideas!

The overwhelming consensus was that £eith Chooses 2021 should go ahead, even in the current challenging and less than ideal circumstances. And it’s happening!

The good news is that, with a little help from the Council, we have found a way to arrange online voting for £eith Chooses 2021, so we won’t need to have a ‘Panel’ to allocate funding after all. We will still hold at least one public meeting online, to support participation, bring everyone up to speed, and to discuss a number of the points brought up in the survey. More news on that soon!

But because time is now short (how did that happen?), we need to push on with the project meanwhile. The Themes used previously received a majority approval rating in the survey results, so we’re sticking broadly with those same topic areas.The 2021 theme is:

In these Covid times- 

  • Challenging food poverty in Leith
    and/or
  • Reducing isolation / ensuring connectedness

There is £46,102 available for projects (max. £5,000 per project)

Application Forms are now available here, and groups will have until 11 December 2020 to fill them in and return them.
The £eith Chooses team will offer support to applicants on demand, but that will be online or by phone, rather than in person. Watch our website for details.

Voting will take place online in January 2021. We will do what we can to help people who cannot easily get online, to vote.

Please get in touch with any questions, or to request an application form. Caroline.Lamond@edinburgh.gov.uk

£EITH CHOOSES 2021 – how will it work?

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During this Covid crisis, safety must come first. The £eith Chooses / Community Grant money allocation process will be different this year – but we want as many people and organisations in Leith as possible to have a say in how the process is carried out.

Please click on this link, https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/LeithChooses2021 and complete the short survey.

Only constituted organisations that benefit the Leith community can apply for a project grant, but everybody can have a say in how they think things should be run.

Please respond by Monday 28th September 2020

If you are representing an organisation, please fill in the organisation’s contact details in the survey.

If you are responding as an individual, we won’t keep your data (Data Protection rules) so if you want to follow up and volunteer to play a part on the £eith Chooses process, please email  caroline.lamond@edinburgh.gov.uk

Thank you
The £eith Chooses team

What’s happening with £eith Chooses projects?

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The £eith Chooses team is of course very aware that normal service delivery and activities have been massively disrupted, for everybody. We have contacted all the community groups that won £eith Chooses grant funding awards in February 2020, to say that we would like to help in whatever way we can.

We understand that some organisations may not be able to deliver their project exactly when and how they had planned to, and that some really creative conversations will take place about possible /necessary adaptations.

We have allocated a named volunteer from the £eith Chooses Steering Group to link supportively with each project group, to join conversations about the direction groups feel they can safely take with their project, to reach the most vulnerable members of our community..
We are hoping that all groups can agree a plan before / by 28 June about how they will be able to use the funding within the spirit of the original agreement.
For example, project groups may aim to –

  • Stick pretty much to the original idea but tweak the delivery methods e.g. food going out to people rather than people coming to gatherings for food.
  • Deliver the original project idea but with a later start date (probably affecting the finish date).
  • Re-prioritise / redesign their original plan and suggest a new project idea that combats social isolation or food poverty right now, in this Covid-19 crisis.

Hopefully groups will not feel that their project cannot be rescheduled or tweaked or revamped in some way and want to return the funding.

Meanwhile, thanks and best wishes  to all groups for everything they are doing in Leith

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Thank you, Leith!

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A huge ‘thank yu’ to everyone who contributed to making £eith Chooses Voting event such a great day, on Saturday. Organisers, project applicants and teams, volunteers, and of course, voters! It all came together in a lovely, buzzy community day when we could find out about all the fantastic charities and groups that work in Leith, for the benefit of our local community.
So the voted are all cast, and are now being counted. The results will be announced on Tuesday 18th February (after half-term, to make sure nobody misses it!).

Would you like to volunteer at £eith Chooses Voting Day?

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Please get in touch if you are interested in helping out at the Voting Day – it is great fun!

Email: caroline.lamond@edinburgh.gov.uk

Short briefing sessions for volunteers at the £eith Chooses Voting Day will be held at 6pm on Tuesday 28  and  Thursday 30 in Leith Community Centre cafe (come to one or the other, not both)

Or ask for written briefing paper.

Volunteers should come along on Voting Day between 9:30 and 10 am

PS You can volunteer AND vote!

)

Feedback Night! Tuesday 12 March, 6:30pm. Come along – Debrief, Discuss, Evaluate, Share ideas…

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£eith Chooses is holding an open discussion session to review and evaluate all aspects of the 2019 £eith Chooses process, and to share ideas for future events. Please do come along if you can – 6:30pm, Leith Community Centre cafe, Tuesday 12 March. All Leithers welcome.

2019 Results are out!

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All the votes have been counted and we can now reveal that the following projects successfully won a funding award in £eith Chooses 2019, having received the highest number of votes from members of the Leith community, at the Voting Event on 23rd February:

FOOD Projects £12,000
– Hermitage Park Primary School: Feeding Healthy Hermie futures £3,400
– YMCA: Breaking down barriers with food  £5,000
– Broughton Primary PC & Partners:Growing food (partial funding) tbc

SUPPORTING VULNERABLE PEOPLE Projects £32,000
– Sikh Sanjog: for Girls and Young Women  £3,000
– Dr. Bells Family Centre: Holiday Activities £4,400
– Creative Electric: Equality and Accessibility £5,000
– Multicultural Family Base: Summer Support £5,000
– Socks for the Street: Leith Cares packs £4,000
– Pilmeny Development Project: Older Peoples services £5,000
– Citadel Youth Centre: Back to the Future, old & young together £4,960
– The Junction: Self-care kits & support (partial funding) tbc

These awards add up to a total of £44,624 that will go to the community in Leith in many and varied ways, through the energy, work and commitment of all the great project teams listed above.

Sadly, projects and groups whose names do not appear above did not win funding on this occasion. This is not a reflection on the quality of their projects, which were all excellent, but of the sad fact that there is never enough money to go round….  The £eith Chooses team feels just as distressed about this as the project groups must be.

Any project applicants who wish private feedback on their application, or on the exact number of votes received, and where their vote totals rank alongside those of other projects, are most welcome to email in for this information, or to request a private discussion. Email: caroline.lamond@edinburgh.gov.uk

There will be an open Discussion session next Tuesday, 12 March at 6:30pm in the Community Centre cafe, to review and evaluate all aspects of the 2019 £eith Chooses process. All welcome, and all views and contributions will be listened to and taken on board for future events. Do come!