Education For Active Citizenship In The Forth Valley

The Bothkennar Centre for Citizen Education

Chairs Report

Active Citizens - Action for Equality

What active citizens said about the programme

Volunteers' Mentoring Support Project

Equality Matters

UP 4 IT

Global Citizenship

Capacity Building

Income and Expenditure

Thanks

Directors and Company Secretary

Previous Annual Reports

Welcome
to our
Annual Report
2004 - 2005

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Education For Active Citizenship In The Forth Valley

CTDU aims to be a resourceful ally to enable groups and individuals to:

act together effectively and co-operatively, by offering skills training and information to people who want to take an active role in running their organisations

build vibrant democratic communities, by running citizen education courses to help people learn new ways of connecting with and representing their communities, looking into and presenting local issues and being heard at local and national government levels

understand the past and the present, and shape the future by holding gatherings of participants from CTDU's member groups to network, to learn more about history, cultures and present day experiences, and to develop confidence and capacity to work for change.

With Core funding from Falkirk and Clackmannanshire Councils, CTDU offers capacity building training to grassroots members of community and voluntary organisations. CTDU projects 2004-2005:

Active Citizen - Action for Equality, funded by the Big Lottery

Equality Matters, funded by the Falkirk Community Planning Partnership

Volunteers' Mentoring Support, funded by the Voluntary Action Fund

UP 4IT, funded by the Lloyds TSB Foundation for Scotland

Global Citizenship and Local Action, funded by the Department for International Development.

The Bothkennar Centre for Citizen Education
We are very fortunate to be based in the beautiful setting of the RSPB Bothkennar reserve, a peaceful and interesting environment for our members to learn from and enjoy. RSPB are particularly interested in protecting the coastline and the many birds which overwinter on the reserve and feed from the mudflats. Several species of endangered birds, and some whose numbers are falling dramatically, live at Bothkennar. Tree sparrows and yellow hammers can be seen feeding in our garden and at the nuts and seed we provide for them, and grey partridges and skylarks inhabit the fields behind the centre.

Chairs Report

This was my first year as chair on the CTDU Board. I've had a few ups and downs but have on the whole enjoyed the time with the help and encouragement of staff members, Students Association and fellow Board members, and I would like to offer my thanks.

Jackie Beresford, Vice-Chair of CTDU and Chair of our Students Association passed away suddenly in January. We were all devastated by the sudden loss of a great friend and colleague who contributed so much to CTDU. Our community is richer for knowing Jackie these last three years.

In June, Iyaah Warren left CTDU to take up a new post. This was another difficult period for everyone at Bothkennar, but we have wonderful memories of Iyaah's work with us all.

One of the highs for the year was Fiona McKeown accepting the training and development worker post for our new Equality Matters project - funded by Falkirk Community Planning Partnership to March 2008. I would like to offer our thanks to Andy Hamilton, Corporate Policy Officer at Falkirk Council, for his support and encouragement.

In the garden at Bothkennar, the living willow wind barrier we built is taking shape and looking good, as is the boat scene which the students had great fun creating. We will be working on a mosaic over the winter, which everyone is looking forward to. I am pleased to announce that we won a 'Newcomers' garden award from Falkirk Council, so well done everyone.

We are also pleased that our volunteer Finlay Currie won Falkirk 'Volunteer of the Year' award and CTDU won a runner up prize for 'Volunteer Engaging Organisation' of the year.

My thanks to our funders, and to the members of the Board, the Students Association, volunteers, sessional workers and of course the staff, Iyaah, Rosemary and Fiona who all contribute to making CTDU such a vibrant organisation.

Lorraine Kane
Chair

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Active Citizens - Action for Equality

Funded by the Big Lottery

In the final year of this grant (2004 - 2005), CTDU worked with a total of 214 people in 45 organisations. From April 2004, the main focus of the project was work with people with a learning disability, and this has enabled CTDU to develop skills in graphic facilitation.

Advocacy into Action
CTDU worked with the committee of Advocacy into Action to create their Memorandum and Articles of Association and Management Committee Roles and Responsibilities in accessible graphic forms.

Open House
Active Citizens from the Alloa Centre Clients Committee, Advocacy into Action and the Students Association took part in an 'Open House' exhibition at the Scottish Parliament called 'Behind the Banners'. The exhibition was for community groups to share the evocative words and images that they choose for their banners, which they made for the Scottish Parliament Opening Ceremony in 2004, with members of the public.

Towards the end of 2004, CTDU commissioned an external review of its Active Citizens programmes. Here are some brief extracts from the review: 'From Silence to Voice'

Active Citizens - Renewing Democracy from the Grassroots 1999 -2002
The first Active Citizens programmes were 12 week training and education programmes for up to 12 community activists and volunteers from 'priority areas' of Forth Valley areas and groups. The group met one day per week in community venues and worked through a programme negotiated with the group.

Reaching out to other excluded communities 2001 - 2002
The educational programme and the methods used had to be adapted to be relevant and suitable for the participants. Banner-making was used to engage firstly an Asian women's group and then a group of students with a learning disability. CTDU found that by assisting communities to make products about their "difference" and creating a platform for the communities to talk in public about the discrimination they face, they had created a very powerful way of teaching citizenship and difference.

During 1999 to 2002 there were 66 'Active Citizens' and 375 other beneficiaries of education, training and development services

Action for Equality 2002 to 2005
Action for Equality was the next phase of the Active Citizens programme and the aim was to increase the number from marginalized groups engaged in community action by engaging new communities in citizen education programmes relevant to their needs. CTDU reached out to people with learning disabilities, black and minority ethnic communities, disabled people and lesbian, gay and transgender people.

During the Action for Equality phase of the project one of the Forth Valley wide programmes that took place included only disabled people. The other programmes were outreach programmes, designed to suit the particular needs of the group at that time. The project worked with a new LGBT organisation, a group of disabled people from Clackmannanshire and Stirling called the Disability Awareness Group, a Black and Minority Ethnic women's group in Falkirk, Denny and Stirling, Mental Health service users and carers in Falkirk and Stirling and people with a leaning disability in Falkirk and Alloa. These programmes were of varying length, the longest being with the Disability Awareness Group who undertook a Participatory Action Research project, recorded their data and reported via a video which they now use to deliver their own access training. They made a further video which is also used for training purposes.

During 2002 to 2005 there were 233 'Active Citizens' and 315 other beneficiaries of education, training and development services.

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Views of people who took part in the Active Citizen Programmes

CTDU members are very active in their own grassroots organisations and their wider communities, and state unequivocally that CTDU has given them the confidence, skills, knowledge and support to do this. Across Forth Valley, some of the most excluded communities - geographical communities in areas of deprivation, and communities of interest such as those of mental health service users, and of physically disabled and learning disabled people - are strengthened directly because of CTDU and its Active Citizens programme.

"The Active Citizens course gave me lots of confidence. I now do a lot of public speaking which I learned at Active Citizens."

"I've learned how to get on, treat everyone equally."

"There are some days when I just cannot get out my door, but most times I can get to CTDU."

"I've used the banners to explain things to other people."

"You don't know what you have inside you - CTDU has brought it out of me very gently."

"Through CTDU I've learnt how to run workshops and get people's ideas for a banner using a flipchart."

'If it hadn't been for CTDU, I wouldn't have been interested in doing things in my community.'

Volunteers' Mentoring Support Project

Funded by the Voluntary Action Fund 2003 to 2006

The project has worked intensively with 4 main groups over the last year. Here are some of the activities the groups have been involved with;

Disability Awareness Group (DAG)

One of the key things for DAG has been working towards their own constitution. The group completed their constitution training in April and now have a constitution. DAG also received a £1000 start up grant from the Community Partnership Team for Regeneration in June 2005.

Making people aware of the issues disabled people face is key to DAG. In March of this year the group ran a very successful Accessible Training Day, 35 people from local voluntary and community groups took part.

In April this year, four members of the Disability Awareness Group took part in the Scottish Parliament's Equal Opportunities Committee consultation in Stirling. The purpose of the meeting was for the committee members to hear about the barriers facing disabled people in accessing work, using further and higher education and taking part in leisure activities.

DAG have made links with a group from Edinburgh called the Democracy Disability and Society Group. This group are in the process of doing similar disability awareness training and in May invited DAG through to Edinburgh to discuss their training programme.

Students Association

The Students Association had their annual ceilidh fundraising event in April. The event raised £1012, which will go towards funding the Students Association educational programme for the coming year.

In preparing for the Make Poverty History march in Edinburgh on 2nd July, students took part in two workshops. One, facilitated by TRAPESE, focused on climate change and the forthcoming G8 summit. Teresa Martinez from Friends of the Earth also ran a workshop about the purpose of the G8, peaceful protest and why the G8 summit was a good opportunity to take action.

The students made a banner to take on the march, which encompasses the main issues of the G8 using pictures and symbols.

In July the students visited the Capacity Building Project in Craigmillar, Edinburgh to present their work at a local community network lunch.

Participatory Action Research Project

The group have worked together with the research mentor and Fiona in putting together the stage 2 funding application to the Scottish Community Action Research Fund. The group were successful with their application and the next stage for the group will be to present their 10-minute drama piece to other groups throughout the Forth Valley.

Participatory Video Project

Volunteers have been involved in a video letter project exchanging stories from Grangemouth with a community in Brazil. A group of volunteers from Grangemouth took part in a training for trainers' programme, learnt basic film making skills, and editing, then made their own short documentary. The group hope to host a public viewing of the film early in 2006.

CTDU Garden Development

In March this year the students took part in willow work training and created a living willow screen for the garden. All the students' hard work has paid off and the main areas of the garden have now been completed. The students maintain the garden on a regular basis. Our garden won a Falkirk Council 'Best Newcomers' prize in the Council's Garden Competition 2005.

Film4UM

In October, two of our students prepared and facilitated a Film 4um event at Bothkennar for the first time. Participants from the Student Association watched the film "Inside I'm Dancing" and then took part in a discussion and questions led by student facilitators.

HNC Student

Lorraine completed her HNC Working with Communities placement at CTDU. Lorraine's piece of work and responsibility was organising and leading a programme of study for CTDU's Student Association. She met with the group and had a mandate from them to set up a global citizenship programme around the events of the Tsunami, Distribution of Aid, and Aids and Africa. Congratulations Lorraine for winning a special award from Falkirk College for the "student who showed most aptitude for community development".

Equality Matters

Funded by the Falkirk Community Planning Partnership

In April 2005 we learned that we were successful in our application to the Falkirk Community Planning Partnership for a new 3-year project 'Equality Matters' which will encourage and enable more people from marginalized communities to be involved in community organising and campaigning. Key areas the project will work on are:

Supporting participants to get their voices heard;

Strengthening grassroots organisations;

Offering intensive support to groups from communities who face considerable barriers to participation, such as disabled people;

Setting up a learning network for participants to exchange information, ideas and good practice with other groups;

Delivering a development programme that will strengthen the voice of communities to influence policy making and service delivery;

Raising awareness locally of range of equality issues;

Broadening participants' horizons by introducing them to CTDU Students Association and becoming involved in a range of arts based media and environmental work to campaign against poverty and equality, locally, nationally and globally.

In October 2005 Fiona McKeown took up her new post of training and development worker with the Equality Matters project and has begun the process of identifying:

How CTDU can support the communities Equality Matters works with.

What the key issues are for communities.

What skills and training people need to participate in their community and in community planning.

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UP 4 IT

Funded by the Lloyds TSB Foundation for Scotland 2005 - 2008

Rosemary is supporting participants to write up their personal stories about poverty and social exclusion and teaching them how to upload their own contributions to a new CTDU Student Association portal website. Participants will learn how to use the website, develop links with other volunteers and community activists locally, nationally, and internationally and can get support to use other community ICT facilities and expertise.

Another key idea of this project is to integrate ICT skills and training into our educational programmes.

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Global Citizenship and Local Action

This year, the programme funded by the Department for International Development has been supplemented by additional funding raised by the students association at their fundraising ceilidh.

Tsunami

Studying the causes and effects of the Tsunami, and aid to people affected by the Tsunami.

Africa & Aids

In March, John McAllion from Oxfam visited CTDU to talk about Aids in
Africa. Some of the things covered were; lack of education on safe sex, how women are viewed in Africa and is enough being done to help aids victims.

International Women's Day event

This event was held in March at Falkirk College. The Students Association led a workshop on CTDU's equality work.

Make Poverty History

In April and May Teresa Martinez of Friends of the Earth and a group called TRAPESE led two workshops on learning about international development targets, the G8 and the events leading up to it.

The Students Association made a new marching banner 'MAKE POVERTY HISTORY' for the march in Edinburgh on 2nd July.

The Students Association were motivated to take part in the Make Poverty History/G8 activities over the summer, and there have been spin offs in other areas such as our involvement in a Video Letters project in Grangemouth which is connecting our members there with a community in Brazil.

Hurricane Katrina

In this session the Students Association discussed the effects of the hurricane, the American Government's reaction to the disaster and global warming.

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Capacity Building

With financial support from Falkirk and Clackmannanshire Councils and direct commissions from voluntary organisations, CTDU works with volunteers and community activists to develop skills, knowledge and confidence to represent their communities, run grassroots community organisations and participate in local initiatives. The organisations CTDU has worked with this year include:

In Falkirk . . . Action Recycle, Denny; Advocacy into Action; Bothkennar Primary School; CVS Falkirk & District; Dawson Area Representative Association (DARA); Denny Community Support Group; Falkirk Council: Schools, Adult Literacies, Community Education Service, Capacity Building, Employment Training Project; Falkirk District Association for Mental Health Carers Group; Falkirk International Women's Day; Falkirk Lesbian and Gay Society (FLAGS); Falkirk Training Consortium; Falkirk Youth Congress; Greenhill Resource Centre; Kersiebank Community Projects; Linked Work Training Trust (Central) Limited; Shaw Trust (in Falkirk).

In Clackmannanshire . . . Advocacy into Action; Alloa Centre Clients' Committee; Alloa Youth Citizenship; Bowmar Centre; Clackmannanshire Community Access Volunteers; Clackmannanshire Council; Clackmannanshire Social Enterprise Development; Clackmannanshire Tenants and Residents Association; ClacksNet; Coalsnaughton and Devonside Regeneration Group; Community Partnership Team for Regeneration; CVS Clackmannanshire; Disability Awareness Group (DAG); Hutton Park Residents Association; Linked Work Training Trust (Central) Limited; People First (in Clackmannanshire); Reachout; ROAD project; Tullibody Regeneration Group; Whins Resource Centre.

In Stirling (no Council funding). . . Adult Carers Education; CVS Stirling; Stirling Multicultural Group.

Forth valley wide organisations . . . Central Scotland Racial Equality Council; Forth Valley Disability Forum; Open Secret; Workers Education Association (WEA) in Forth Valley.

Other groups . . . Carbon Trade Watch; Cofan people; Community Health Exchange; Craigmillar Capacity Building Project; Disability, Democracy and Society Group; Falkirk College; Falkirk Town Hall; Friends of the Earth (Scotland); Golden Oldie Education (GOE); Jubilee Scotland; Learning Link Scotland; Marhaba; Oxfam; Pilton Partnership Group; Popular Education Forum for Scotland; Poverty Alliance; Scottish Education and Action for Development (SEAD); Scottish Executive; Scottish Parliament; TRAPESE; University of Edinburgh.

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Income and Expenditure
April 2004 to March 2005

A full set of accounts is available on request.

Reporting Accountants
ATN Chartered Accountants
Greencornhill
38 Falkirk Road
Bannockburn
Stirling
FK7 8AG

Bankers
Bank of Scotland
138/140 High Street
Falkirk
FK1 1NR

Thanks to

Volunteers

Finlay Currie for countless hours of centre maintenance and management, garden development, driving, and fundraising.

Nigel Ramage for collecting and transporting student association members throughout the year.

Ann Gray for shopping and preparing lunch for our Student Association and Global Citizenship events.

Alexander and Willie Samson of SB Productions for volunteering their time and skills to produce two great video productions

Garden development

Forties Bravo Charity Committee, Falkirk Environmental Trust, Joan Campbell of Willow Work

Community Work Students

Grateful thanks Bill Webster and Lorraine Kane for their enthusiastic and excellent work for CTDU, particularly on the Global Citizenship programmes.

Ceilidh fundraiser

Finlay Currie, Liz Johnstone (the buffet was superb), Allan Thomson, Kevin Mochan, Carey Sinclair, Ann, Carol and Steven Gray, Fraser Currie, Chic McPherson, Pauline Graham, Drew Wilson, and the staff at First Group Cumbernauld.

Friends of CTDU

Jan Nimmo, Joette Thomas, Jean Bareham, Teresa Martinez, Heidi Bachram, Ell Southern, Karen Grant, John Mcallion, Lynn Burnett, George Lamb, Mike Bell, Lorraine Kane, Carey Sinclair, Tansy Lee Moir, James Gibson, Alex Staerck, Allan Thomson of Central Training Services Bo'Ness, Clare Harwood, Kenneth Knowles, Norman Phillip, Shamime Mansoori, Mike Trubridge, Andy Hilton, Fraser Currie, Harry Fairley, Ben Stollery, ATN Chartered Accountants, Cathy Peattie, and our neighbours at Bothkennar Fiona, Charlie and Joy.

Special thanks to:

Iyaah Warren, for never failing to inspire and encourage everyone in her work and for being the best colleague you could wish for. 10 years service was a long time but somehow it passed quickly - we wish it had been longer!

And finally ….

All our students and participants for their enthusiastic and thoughtful work with CTDU this year.

Previous Annual Reports available online:

2004