How Community Action Milton Keynes works with local voluntary and community groups, including refugee community organisations (RCOs)
One of the RCOs that Community Action Milton Keynes works with is Advantage MK.
Transcript - Community Action Milton Keynes
Ruth Stone – Director
The organisation has been here since 1979 and we’ve grown very rapidly because the city has grown rapidly. We’ve taken on the community development model, certainly in the decade that I’ve been here, and it’s become a lot stronger over that period because the diversity of people coming to Milton Keynes has greatly increased.
We offer universal support and information services for anybody who wants to get involved in community activity, particularly as part of a group – we’re trying to get people to work together.
The voluntary and community sector here is incredibly vibrant, because Milton Keynes was set up under a development corporation that very proactively promoted getting involved. And everyone who moves here is new, so it’s great place to be new – virtually all your neighbours, even if they’ve been here 20 years, still remember what it’s like to be new. So it’s a very unique place. And I think that incoming populations, wherever they come from, whether it’s this country or somewhere else in the world, have got common ground which probably makes some things easier to get going than in more traditional locations.
In terms of refugee organisations I don’t think we make any differentiation – we’re absolutely passionate about everybody getting involved. But we do focus quite a lot on more disadvantaged areas of the city.
David Livermore – Deputy Director
In certain estates in Milton Keynes we found that there was not quite such a concentrated level of community activity for a variety of reasons. So we developed our Community Mobiliser programme which looked to place workers with community development experience to work with individuals in those communities around their ideas, interests and issues around their estates. To look at how they can start to develop their own actions around whatever their interest is. That’s led to a different range of actions, depending on the individuals and communities. So rather than us presenting an issue and expecting people to feed back to us, it’s starting from where their interests are.
Jeanette Hyde – Membership Officer
My role is largely in information provision in terms of our website and Facebook and I do some outreach visits and basic development work.
Hannah Miles – Funding Advice Worker
My role is to help voluntary and community groups to find and apply for funding. We’re not a grant-giving organisation ourselves, but we help them to find funding and check that they’re set up properly as well. More recently I also work with groups to help them set up and develop as well.
Lizzie Bailes – Community Mobiliser
I work over on the Fishermead estate in Milton Keyens. There are 10 Mobilisers across Milton Keynes and we work with schools, children’s centres and families to get residents more involved in their local community and help them to get things set up that they want. We find out their issues, their interests and ideas, work with them to get training and to motivate them to do things that they want to happen in their community.
Jeanette Hyde
I work as part of the outreach project which is partly about mapping the voluntary sector – finding out about the groups there are – and also about giving people the opportunity to meet up and network. We try to match up groups that can support each other – our last meeting had about 60 people.
We also do one-to-one visits as well, finding out what groups are up to and what support we can offer them or point them towards. So through that we’ve actually met quite a wide variety of groups across Milton Keynes.
Lizzie Bailes
The refugee group that I work with is a Somali group based on the Fishermead estate. I first met one of the leaders of the group a year or so ago in a hostel on the estate where he was living. He spoke to me about issues on which he felt he was the voice for his community. I met a few more members of the group and we’ve since looked at avenues of funding and how they can get more formally constituted. I now meet quite regularly with the chair and a couple of other members to talk about their priorities. Once thing they highlighted was health, and so we’re doing a Somali health day in December to look at some of the issues that they think are really important
David Livermore
There’s a great mix of skills in refugee communities and they’re often able to engage on an organisational level with an organisation like Community Action Milton Keynes. They are aware about what need exists and in their community and what action they’d like to take. It’s more about how to establish themselves as a group, how to get support and funding.
Lizzie Bailes
The group is quite proactive about getting things done, rather than just waiting for things to happen – that can be the issue for groups that have had a lot of things done for them and then don’t know how to do things for themselves. Whereas I think coming into this country or being new into an area you’re not necessarily aware of these services so you have more of this attitude of “We’re going to do it for ourselves because no one’s going to do it for us”. So in that sense I think it’s quite inspiring to work with refugee community organisations.
http://www.vcsmk.org.uk/mkcvo
Transcript - Advantage MK
My name is Ahmed Mahmoud I came here almost ten years ago. I originally came from Somalia, although I am British now. I am the manager here at Advantage MK.
Here at Advantage Mk we have a mixed programme. For example we have citizenship classes and we have ESOL (English for speakers of other languages) classes.
We have ongoing help from Community Action Milton Keynes (formerly known as MKCVO). A qualified ESOL teacher comes from them and teaches our people. She was doing it on a voluntary basis but I am now able to offer her a contract because of the grants that we have.
Community Action Milton Keynes has the profile of whatever we are doing. If anyone wants to know what is going on somewhere they would call them and be given information.
Whatever resources I need, I will go to them. If I need a consultation, for example, or legal advice I will ask them who to speak to and they will come back to me.
We also have an employability programme going on, we have community support going on – we have so many programmes. Tomorrow, for example, there will be three programmes going on.: after school club, cultural classes and a security training course.
The place was labelled before that it was for the Somali community and it was very difficult because if we want to sustain ourselves and deal with only one community then we’re not going anywhere. It became difficult to promote myself to say that this place is not just for Somalis, it is for all. So, for example, for our after school club we were knocking on doors asking people if they would like to come – but when the white guys see all the black guys going in they don’t know what is going on. And we said “Will you please come in? We have computers and we have internet.” Gradually that makes a difference. So now, we still mainly have Somalis coming but I don’t work only for Somalis, I work for all.
