What we believe: Practical tools for community empowerment

The value of activity

From its beginnings, over 30 years ago, the Resource Centre has believed in the activity of ordinary people. At our core is the idea that people getting together to do things they themselves have decided to do is valuable:

• It’s good for the people themselves – the process of working with other people increases confidence and social contacts.
• It’s good for their community – the product of the activity generally benefits more than just those directly involved.
• It’s good for the city – a city of active communities is a more exciting, vibrant, equal and happy place.

We have worked with hundreds of different community and voluntary organisations in Brighton & Hove, and it is clear to us that an active and vital community and voluntary sector brings many benefits to the city and to those involved in voluntary activity.

Supporting people to make a difference

The Centre wants to encourage this activity. To be a place where community groups can find practical solutions for their shared problems, and therefore make smoother progress towards their own aims.

Much has changed over the years – at the Centre, in Brighton & Hove, and in society as a whole – but this core aim is still what motivates us. At the heart of all our work are these key principles:

• providing practical help for specific problems
• being led by the needs of our user groups
• supporting people who are working to transform their own communities
• concentrating our efforts to provide support for grass roots volunteers, not paid professionals

We provide practical support because that is what groups need. The thousands of uses by the hundreds of groups testify to the importance of good equipment, up to date information, and relevant advice to the work of groups in the town.

We are led by our user groups as it is the only way we can be sure that we do provide what groups need. As times change so do the needs of groups and so, therefore, do their demands on the Resource Centre. We can only adapt usefully because we are constantly in contact with our users and, crucially, because our management committee is elected from our priority groups.

We support people who are working in their own communities because it is clear that those people are more effective than outsiders. Volunteers working to change their own lives and those of their families and friends bring a passion and commitment that cannot be matched by top-down services provided by the statutory or private sectors.

Similarly we concentrate on grass roots volunteers because they are closer to the problems they are trying to solve, and to the people they are working with.

Principles into practice

The Resource Centre exists to encourage and support community activity. While we welcome, and are heavily used by, other voluntary organisations, our central focus is on the smaller community groups: those with little funding and no staff who nevertheless play a vital role in the life of the city. Our central aim is to make it easier for these groups to achieve what they are trying to do, to supply them with the tools for their work that are not available elsewhere and to help make their efforts as productive as possible.

Our users are enabled to:

• raise money for their group, using our range of fair stalls, our information about grants and trusts, and our best practice sheets on how to write applications.
• run more successful meetings and events using our range of equipment for hire, and our information sheets on chairing, minute taking and event planning.
• communicate with their members and the public using our print facilities and computer network.
• publicise their work using our local media contact sheet and our sheets on writing a press release and giving interviews.
• build a good organisational structure using our sheets on legal structures and constitutions, on the roles of officers, on developing an equal opportunities policy and on monitoring and evaluation.
• manage their finances effectively, using our information sheets on budgeting, book-keeping and bank accounts, and further detailed information in our reference library.

We can also offer groups brief advice on all of these areas, through our front desk ‘advice on demand’ service. For our priority users – groups in areas of social housing, black and minority ethnic groups and those composed of disabled people – we can offer more extensive training and advice and a flexible consultancy service designed to offer one to one support in any area.

Special support to particular groups

The Resource Centre recognises that some people face additional barriers when getting together to organise. For twenty years, therefore, we have done more intensive work with groups based in areas of social housing and for more than a decade have also worked more closely with black and minority ethnic groups and those composed of disabled people.

Clearly people in areas of social housing, and black and disabled people, face a host of difficulties in our society. For the Resource Centre, however, there is another element in our decision to give priority to these groups. Not only do people in these groups face particular problems but the groups themselves face particular barriers to organising. Their members are more likely:

• to be excluded from the centre of power and therefore feel less confident that they are entitled to access things that other groups would take for granted.
• to be unaccustomed to formal situations and so less confident about how to structure things and how to approach people.
• to be without access to equipment in, for example, their workplace. (No running off the minutes on the office photocopier at lunchtime!)
• to have few educational qualifications, or not have English as first language, and to be less confident about speaking, reading and writing.
• to be geographically isolated or to face practical barriers such as a lack of accessible venues for meetings and events.
• to be living on low incomes, and therefore less able to fund group activities out of their own pockets.

All of these are, of course, generalisations and there are many exceptions. Nevertheless the fact that they are broadly true means that people in these groups face much higher barriers when trying to organize, and are much more likely to be excluded from things others take for granted. In these circumstances the Centre has to make a special effort to make sure our services are equally accessible to these kinds of group.

In providing specific support services for these priority groups, we aim to respond to the actual needs of groups, as they arise. While we are happy to pass on our experience of what has worked for other groups, and our knowledge of the law and the current preferences of funders, we take care not to impose our own agenda on any group.

“On tap, not on top”

Our staff have considerable expertise in organising and supporting small community groups, but are aware at all times of the need for our expertise to be a resource that is on tap for the groups we work with, to use as they need it, not something that distorts or overrides their own aims and decisions.

We deliver services in a form that is immediately responsive to a group’s need for support, whether this be equipment for an event, printing or photocopying facilities, information or advice.

We make our services easy to access by:

• being open to the public for 28 hours a week
• keeping charges low
• maintaining a good stock of equipment
• running efficient booking systems
• offering flexible appointments for our additional support sessions

We understand that volunteers in community groups have limited time, and need their problems sorted out as quickly and smoothly as possible.

Because we are committed to being led by the needs of our user groups, we have a structure which ensures that the direction of the Resource Centre is controlled by a committee of trustees made up of, and elected by, volunteer community activists living in areas of social housing.

Only in Brighton and Hove

It’s easy to forget, living here, just how unusual Brighton and Hove is in terms of the quantity and variety of support available in the city. We are approached every week by groups from around the country asking where they can get equipment like ours locally, or if there is a local branch of the Resource Centre in their area. The reality is, however, that nowhere else in the country provides the mix of support that we do, and that in very few places is the kind of equipment we provide available to groups.

We’re proud to be part of what makes Brighton and Hove different. Together with other support organisations, many of them unique in their own ways, we are working to create a rich and vibrant support landscape, which nurtures the hundreds of diverse groups whose activity is a big part of what makes the city such a special place.

Last updated July 2009