This month, Reaching People celebrated 15 years of collaboration across Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland (LLR) with a landmark anniversary event bringing together members, founders, funders, civic leaders and partners to reflect on the partnership’s journey and look towards the next 15 years.
Held at The Grove Community Hub in Braunstone, Leicester, ‘The Power of Us: Transforming our Community’ event marked a significant milestone for the partnership of voluntary and community organisations, which has grown into one of the region’s strongest and most collaborative VCSE networks since its formation in 2011.
A vision for the next 15 years
In his keynote address Danny Sriskandarajah, one of the UK’s leading voices in civil society, drew on his learning from senior leadership positions at Oxfam GB, CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation and the New Economics Foundation and membership of the Independent Inquiry into the Future of Civil Society, chaired by Dame Julia Unwin.
Danny helped the audience to consider how civil society can respond to changing communities and increasingly complex challenges, while ensuring local people have a genuine role in shaping the decisions that affect them.
Posing the question, “how do you lead in uncertain times?”, Danny asserted that ‘civil society is more important than ever and we need to invest in people power”.
Despite acknowledging that “no time is more challenging than now” in terms of division, stagnation, cost of living and inequality, Danny identified four ways in which we can help civic society to navigate the next 15 years:
• Defending the civic space – stand in solidarity, collaborate, work with others to protect collective freedoms.
• Revitalising democracy – the sector should be the vanguard of revitalising democracy, empowering communities to ‘speak truth to power’.
• Rethinking the economy – the ABCD approach is critical, building a sense of belonging, long term assets and sense of ownership.
• How we show up as civil society – biggest isn’t always best, the real power is in connected communities.
Danny added: “The world is a tough place at the moment for much of civil society but it is always inspiring to meet people and organisations doing wonderful work, and collective bodies like Reaching People scaling, strengthening and amplifying what local organisations are doing. And to spend time in a community-owned hub with a great community cafe was icing on the (15th birthday) cake!”
Watch Danny's speech here.
Celebrating the power of collaboration
Over the past 15 years, Reaching People’s members have worked together to support communities across LLR, sharing knowledge and delivering community-led solutions to some of the biggest challenges facing local people.
Today, its member organisations provide vital services to thousands of residents, working collectively to tackle poverty, inequality and the root causes of disadvantage.
The anniversary event provided an opportunity to celebrate the achievements made through partnership working, while recognising the people and organisations that have helped shape Reaching People over the past 15 years.
The event also looked beyond the achievements of the past, asking what the next 15 years could look like for civil society across LLR.
Looking ahead together
A panel discussion then brought together voices from across the sector to explore the future of civil society locally. Discussions focused on how organisations can work more equitably, respond to rising levels of need and move towards approaches where communities are not simply consulted, but are empowered to lead change.
The panel was chaired by Reaching People Trustee, Tracey Waterfield and speakers included: Danny Sriskandarajah, Sue Tilley from Leicestershire Business Voice, Angie Wright from b inspired and Mick McGrath from Locality.
Some of the key messages from the panel discussion included:
• Tackling the causes and impact of poverty is political. Defend our civil space to speak up. ‘Seek forgiveness, not permission’.
• Government is more interested now in listening to civil society interests. Communication is key - we need to make people understand the value of the sector as demonstrated in Covid, including the business community.
• The state, public services and civil society are all in this together and we need to establish a trusted-relationships, working alongside organisations such as Reaching People and Locality.
• We need to overcome the contractor/ commissioner relationship, the apprehensiveness across sectors of collaboration due to reduced resources.
• We need to bring young people into the sector.
• The VCSE sector is well placed to help prepare for devolution and local government reorganisation and keeping community voices central to it.
Strengthening civil society
Sarah Richards, Joint CEO at Reaching People concluded: “We were delighted to see so many members joining us to celebrate the past 15 years and look forward to how the local VCSE sector will continue to operate in the future.
“Our network is strong and that is key to the success of the projects on which we work. Leadership, partnerships and collaborations are bringing about real community-led change which gives us confidence that Reaching People and its members can continue to strengthen civil so
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