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barkery.jammeh
Hello and thank you for reading today’s Volunteer Centre Manchester blog post. Just to let you know, we will be submitting a lot more posts on a regular basis to keep you up to date with what’s new at Volunteer Centre Manchester, so watch this space! Okay, back to today’s post. At Volunteer Centre Manchester we like to talk to the volunteers that use our services and the organisations we work…
barkery.jammeh's blog

michelle.foster
We’ve just published our updated data sets for volunteers and groups for January – March 2016, which can be found here: https://www.manchestercommunitycentral.org/policy-and-influence/open-da…. Open Data Manchester, which was set up as part of FutureEverything’s Open Data Cities project and sought to create a forum for people who were working on or interested in Open Data in the region, held an…
michelle.foster's blog

Mike Wild
Do you realise that the result of the EU Referendum will be announced in Manchester? Must admit, that one had passed me by in the midst of a lot of noise which is supposedly the national debate. Campaigning has only just officially started but of course it’s been going on for months if not years already. There’s a lot of media coverage about the political positioning and opinions being hurled…
Mike Wild's blog

michelle.foster
Our open data on groups and volunteers has been updated and added to our website: https://www.manchestercommunitycentral.org/policy-and-influence/open-data I’d be really interested to hear if you’ve ever used our open data and how you’ve used it. There are lots of open data sources out there where you can discover interesting things about where you live and the people in your neighbourhood, the…
michelle.foster's blog

Mike Wild
I don’t think any of us is expecting life to get any easier in 2016! There are many so forces acting upon us as a sector at the moment which can make it feel like our agenda is being reduced to a fight for survival – and yet there are opportunities ahead. The difficulty will be in getting ourselves organised as a sector to be able to take them up. We need to increase collaboration and that takes…
Mike Wild's blog

Nigel Rose
This blog is a summary of some of the key trends that Macc’s Policy and Influence team have spotted during the last year that we think will impact on Manchester’s Voluntary Sector over the next year. It is not comprehensive by any means and we apologise for all the really important and vital stuff that we’ve missed out. We’ve not included the most obvious trend which is that there will be less…
Nigel Rose's blog

Mike Wild
I'm being a bit cheeky calling this one a blog as 99.99% of this page is not by me at all. However, this is a good place to share it. Below is a talk given by an American activist and fundraiser called Dan Pallotta. He brilliantly sums up some of the attitudes which distort the way the charity sector functions. I heartily agree with a lot of what he says - it's well worth watching. 
Mike Wild's blog

Mike Wild
I can’t help feeling that the news that yet another hole has opened in the ground in Manchester is too good a metaphor to waste. While the city is clearly enjoying economic success and is at the forefront of the devolution agenda, we’re also seeing increasing numbers of people sleeping rough, public services under threat due to budget cuts and enormous pressure on voluntary and community groups…
Mike Wild's blog

Mike Wild
There’s a report in today’s Manchester Evening News which tells about further massive cuts to mental health services in Manchester and that the Manchester Health and Social Care Trust is expected to close down completely.http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/nhs-trust-axed-manchester-crisis-10348427 While none of the detail has, as far as I can see been officially…
Mike Wild's blog

michelle.foster
Our open data on groups and volunteers has been updated and added to our website. Last year I attended a Discovering Neighbourhood Statistics workshop run by the University of Manchester, it was a great workshop that gave a really good overview and insight on how to use the Office of National Statistics Neighbourhood Statistics website. The website can be daunting to use but you can discover so…
michelle.foster's blog

Mike Wild
A few weeks back I met with a group of voluntary & community sector leaders working with children young people and families and our local Director of Children's Services. We were talking about how to build the relationship between the sectors so we hit on the idea of writing a blog to challenge a few myths and misconceptions which tend to distort the relationship. What follows was written for…
Mike Wild's blog

Mike Wild
A few weeks back I met with a group of voluntary & community sector leaders working with children young people and families and our local Director of Children's Services. We were talking about how to build the relationship between the sectors so we hit on the idea of writing a blog to challenge a few myths and misconceptions which tend to distort the relationship. What follows was written for…
Mike Wild's blog