Gearing Up

A second quietish week with few meetings, but next week is mad, and presages the long haul to December. So it has been a week concentrating on internal matters (and some eternal, but that’s another matter…the power of words..change one letter and you end up in a different world!!)

Yes INTERNAL…we had a visit from colleagues in SATRO wanting to find out why we chose a Cloud computing system – I write this from home at 8.15 am prior to going off to a meeting in Horsham with our sister organisation West Sussex Council for Voluntary Youth Services – and have all my email and files accessible to me. We are all totally independent of our office location. SO, realising that there may be a wider interest, we will be running a workshop about cloud computing.

I have also been preparing for submitting to the Charities Evaluation Service for their Level 2 quality assurance scheme called Pqasso –“Practical quality assurance for small organisations” . We already have a Level 1 award, but it expires on 23 November after 3 years. So we are re-submitting at a higher level. I am very pleased that we don’t have to do too much work to bring ourselves up to Level2, unless I am wholly mistaken, which is pleasing as it means that our procedures and practices have become embedded.

We are working on the press launch of CommUniLAB with our sponsors, and will tell you more next week.

We have been invited by Surrey CC to consider taking over the management of Woking Youth Arts Centre in Knaphill, Woking, where the principal tenant is a member organisation of ours – Peer Productions – who do brilliant work in developing young people as actors in plays they devise themselves to illustrate social problems. These plays are then performed at the WYAC  and taken in to schools. It  would be a departure for us to undertake property management, and there are some very serious issues to consider. This will be a Trustee Board decision…but it is interesting strategically….there are 32 SCC youth centres.

Finally, we are preparing for our AGM on Tuesday 17 September at 5.00pm at Walton Firs – a beautiful 25 acre camp site an (Ian Botham) stone’s throw from junction 10 on the M25. We have the Deputy CEO of the National Youth Agency (NYA) as main speaker. Should be of great interest to youth workers ..the professionalization of youth work…and to Members. Just email me if you’d like to come along.

I get older this weekend and possibly wiser…I am thrilled to have treated myself to two brilliant theology books…I know….I know that’s what my wife thinks too  ..but it takes all sorts!

Up in London at the weekend to support daughter in law in charity half-marathon..running for a  university friend who, as the result of an accident, is now blind and paraplegic …..very humbling. 

Mike