Exactly a year to the day since I landed in Brazil. It seems quite pertinent that it happens to be the day that Great Yarmouth Borough Council has changed from Conservative control to Labour in the 2012 local council elections. Voter turnout was significantly low and civic engagement remains a challenge for the British democratic process in spite of initial fanfares surrounding the repackaging of initiatives such as community organising and participatory budgeting.
I have since completed the paper on my fellowship and am happy to share. I travel to London on 30th May to collect my official Churchill Medallion and pass out as a Churchill Fellow.
I am also now a fully fledged member of the East Anglia Regional Association Committee. We had a meeting last week in Cambridge, where amongst other things we were looking at ways of increasing applications to the Churchill Trust from the region. If anybody has any ideas please let me know!
I am currently also working on a reflective paper with my colleague Holly Notcutt, looking at community organising in the context of an established community development programme in Great Yarmouth, much of this has been informed by my time in San Francisco.
My work in Great Yarmouth continue to focus on community development and social change. We are shortly about to launch a Centre of Excellence -CoSocial, which will offer expert training and advice to others, particularly local government practitioners in enabling communities to shape their own destinies. Our web-site is www.cosocial.org.uk
Apart from that, life continues… and I hope richer as a consequence of my time abroad.
-RG
04/05/12
