This is a reminder that the next One Walsall One Voice Forum for Walsall West, takes place on Tuesday 3rd July from 6pm-8pm at Willenhall CHART Centre. Places can be booked by sending me a message to say you want to come along. Please invite others as well.

In addition to the teas/coffees we will be sharing some pizza so please come ready to have a few slices

The Guardian Newspaper is expected to be at the meeting. They are researching an article about the voluntary sector and its contribution to Walsall as well as filming in the area for a documentary to come out on Channel  5  later this year. They want to interview a few people at the meeting so please have a few points ready to share. ?

Part of the One Walsall offer to local groups working in the community is to support them to work collaboratively to bring in much needed resources to the sector. For example they have worked with the Police in promoting their Active Citizens Fund. Also held a World Café style meeting in February which resulted in three groups (All Saints Church in Darlaston, Boaters Fishing Club in Willenhall and Frank F Harrison Community Centre – for delivery of youth work in New Invention) securing funding of approx. £5000 each.

One Walsall also recently promoted an opportunity for the sector to work collaboratively to submit a bid to the Home Office for funding to help combat knife crime. As a result over 15 groups were represented at a meeting to discuss the opportunity and a bid was submitted with at least 6 partners named within the bid.

These are examples of the support they are making to you and they want to discuss these and other opportunities at the forum meeting.

As well as aiming to bring groups together around funding opportunities the forum also aims to bring people together to:

• Identify opportunities to share resources ensuring that the resources that the sector has are used to maximum effect.
• Look for opportunities to support each other so that services remain sustainable
• Support the development of a local VCS offer that can be promoted to statutory partners eg. schools, local authority, police, health etc
• Influence statutory partners in their decision making around the commissioning of services through the locality plan.

If you want to be part of this growing network and help shape its future work please come along. The more groups who can engage the stronger the network will be and the greater the impact.