Contents
Introduction
Alex Neil MSP, Minister for Housing and Communities
I am delighted to be able to welcome you to this first Scottish Community Empowerment Newsletter.
In response to your suggestions that we need to share, ideas and celebrate success, we will issue newsletters on a quarterly basis, to help inspire, encourage and support community empowerment across Scotland.
Make no mistake that the Scottish Government remains committed to supporting and enabling communities to do things for themselves. We have in place a range of grants totalling nearly £180m from 2008 to 2011, that can help local people deliver the changes they want to see in their communities. These were set out together for the first time in the Community Empowerment Action Plan, launched in March this year.
The launch of the plan was a key milestone on a journey to see more communities becoming more empowered. We know that this journey will take time, but we are starting from a strong position. These Newsletters will give you updates on progress with the actions set out in the Plan, as well as highlighting existing examples of empowerment.
Communities across Scotland can, and should, have an active role and responsibility for the issues that affect them. It is important to learn from one another, share experience and best practice to build safer, stronger, wealthier and fairer communities across Scotland. The examples of community empowerment in this first edition of the newsletter are testimony to the determination, resilience and success of communities across Scotland, especially in these challenging economic times, when many communities are also facing major social problems. We recognise that community empowerment in Scotland is evolving. But I hope that you are inspired and energised by the examples presented here.
I look forward to learning more about how local people are becoming more involved in shaping and managing the services and facilities that they need, and to sharing more examples of good practice, in future editions of this community empowerment newsletter. I congratulate everyone involved and encourage other communities, and the partners who support them, to take up the challenge.
Councillor Harry McGuigan, COSLA
Since publication of the Community Empowerment Action Plan earlier this year, COSLA has endorsed and progressed community empowerment approaches across a number of policy areas. As part of the Anti-Social Behaviour Implementation Plan, for example, five Participatory Budgeting projects which have community empowerment at their heart will be selected to pilot innovative approaches to tackling and preventing anti-social behaviour. And in discussions on the 2011 International Children's Games to be held in the Lanarkshires and the 2014 Commonwealth Games, I am particularly keen to ensure that the legacies from both deliver increased community-led participation in sport, culture and local developmental activity across Scotland.
Across the country there is a huge range of community organisations supporting local people to have a bigger say and influence over and involvement in the decisions that affect them. This newsletter showcases a few of those committed organisations, from the Blantyre Miners' Welfare, founded in 1928 and providing 21st century services and facilities, to the community-led Cultenhove Health & Wellbeing Network bringing local people round the table with local service providers. From Westray in the north to Glenkens Community And Arts Trust in the south, communities are coming together around environmental issues to make a real difference not just for today but for the future.