myplace financial sustainability workshops

Sustainability is a big issue, particularly in the current economic climate and so the myplace Support Team thought it wise to produce a workshop on the financial sustainability for myplace projects.

The workshop was held at the C-RMZ project in Halton and was a great success with around 50 people attended from projects in the North West, Yorkshire and Humber, and Stoke.

Project manager Lorraine Crane kicked everything off by welcoming everybody and giving an outline of the day's events. There was then a session entitled ‘What's Keeping You Awake at Night?' which looked at many of the problems, issues and challenges projects are facing. What came out of that was that projects are coming up against very similar problems and so it was very beneficial just to find out that others are in the same boat.

There was then a presentation led by the young people of Knowsley's ‘Ourplace' project who put on an excellent display of their centre. Followedby a series of presentations on financial sustainability from Dave Adamson of Blackpool's Southpoint project, myplace Support Team member Tom Calderbank, and CEO of OnSide North West Jerry Glover MBE.There was also a tour of the C-RMZ which was a good opportunity for others to see what another myplace project was like.

The myplace Support Team were also offering advice on other areas and made available the Support Team Good Practice Guides for funding essentials, engaging sponsors, social enterprise, sponsorship events, as well as the guide on financial sustainability.Support Team member Tom Calderbank was very happy with how the workshop had gone and hopes it will set the projects in good stead for the future.

He said: "That the turnout was so good for the workshop speaks volumes for the economic climate we are in.It is not often that a workshop on a subject such as this would end with delegates smiling, happy and animated but they did this time and that was testament to the power of the speakers and more importantly the power of the delegates and the support they showed one another.We hope that projects will act on their desire to form a sustainability network which would look to provide support to one another going forward."

Tom was not the only person who was impressed with the workshop, just have a look at some of the areas attendees found particularly useful:

"I found all presentations and networking with other colleagues a fantastic opportunity"

"Relaxed atmosphere to network"

"Small engagement sessions worked well, group discussions"

"The importance of forward financial planning and publicity"

The workshop was so successful that the Support Team are running another on Wednesday 9^th March at the Bridgwater YMCA myplace project in Somerset. This will have the same format as the previous workshop but will also feature a representative from UK Youth talking about the opportunity projects have for setting up a Youth Achievement Foundation.

Places are still available for the next workshop, as well as other workshops in March. So don't miss out, check out the myplace events diary.