Bridgebuilder

Well the petrol strike that never was (as yet), and the hosepipe ban that causes it to rain – how contrary life is!

The PM launched Big Society Bank and I watched Sir Ronald Cohen (Chairman) on the tv talking about it. I sat next to him by chance at the Social Finance conference in London about a year ago. I am quietly pleased that I having been banging on about social finance and social enterprise for the last 2 years. Sir Ronald was the inventor of venture capitalism and is a world stage figure; he will give social finance a maojor profile. I repeat Surrey ought to be the national leader on this given its financial expertise and wealth. We in SYF are doing our bit in framing our bid for Surrey Youth Enterprise, about which more later.

Other Government policy statements are important: Positive for Youth, the s507 obligation on local authorities to secure positive activities for young people, and most recently the Youth Contract.

Just agreed with Surrey Chambers that the next round of our "4x4 project" will be on 14 June…I already have 6 member organisations lined up to participate.

I am impressed with The Challenge Network who came to see me last Friday; with Catch 22 they are the contractors for the National Citizenship Scheme in Surrey and already have 570 young people signed up for this summer’s programme. Impressive. I hope The Challenge Network will become members of ours.

I am meeting with Garath Symonds of Surrey CC (Assistant Director Young People) later this (Thursday) morning and we have a long list of issues and topics to discuss. I see this as part of our Representation and Advocacy role….accessing Surrey CC’s senior manager commissioning services for young people. And I know that some of the issues will need to morph into a “honest broker” role, bridge-building between parties. We also provide support services to our members. Whether we have the right balance of time between these three roles and other related matters is what we’ll be discussing at our awayday in May, with a facilitator who is just about to join me now to plan the event. She has already provided us with some training on social media, and will be great at this.

I am on leave for most of next week (writing MA dissertation) so no blog now until Friday 20 April- so Happy Easter!

Mike