Our volunteer Simon Gibson has been trained as a Community Conversation facilitator and held a very successful meeting at his local Neighbourhood Watch in Priory Park.
He saw how our Community Conversations project could inject new life into his local Neighbourhood Watch…
Simon Gibson: I had been the co-ordinator of my Neighbourhood Watch in Priory Park, Upton Park, for over 18 months as a way to try and help my community. After a while the group had very small attendance, was lacking in energy and I was not sure whether the neighbourhood watch was really meeting needs. Being a volunteer for C&C, I went along to a volunteer training evening on using ‘Appreciative Enquiry’ as part of its Community Conversations project. It’s all about focussing on positive life experiences - the principle being is that what you focus on becomes a reality.
I thought this is brilliant and would be useful for my neighbourhood watch where the focus was generally on the negative. So with the help of Ros and the Community Conversations team I started planning a conversation in my Neighbourhood Watch on the issue of “What makes for a better community spirit?” The aim was to generate ideas of how we could have more of these experiences here and now. Even the children shared their ideas!
What was different?
Before I had done the training at C&C I probably would have tried to push the group to being more committed, but this way enabled them to discover the joy, energy and the ownership of their ideas. Thus it was easy for them to commit as it was coming from them and this is what they wanted.
What then?
The Neighbourhood Watch group began meeting regularly to plan a community barbecue. I admit it was not easy to get the group to fit into the way I had planned the meetings to go, however, it all came together. The event was a real success, but most important was the process of getting people to work together and the bonds and energy this has created in the community. People are enthused and are starting to believe that they and make a difference in their community.
