Waveney Community Forum
Council for Voluntary Service Ltd

One Thousand pounds prize draw for Voluntary and Community groups in Waveney

There are a large number of community and voluntary organisations in the Waveney area. Exactly quite how many isn’t known. How many people are involved in Waveney? How many people benefit? How much is the voluntary work worth in Waveney? These are all unknowns.

Waveney Community Forum – an umbrella organisation for the voluntary and community sector – wants to remedy this lack of solid recognition.

The Forum needs information
The Forum want to try to find out every organisation that works in the area, what they do, how many people they reach, how many hours they devote to their activity – in short, to produce an accurate picture of community and voluntary activity in Waveney, and most importantly, how much it’s worth to the local economy.

One Thousand pounds in cash prize draw
To this end, the Forum sent out a survey 10 days ago to over 300 voluntary and community organisations in the Waveney District. We have already over 10% responses, but this is information gathering rather than a statistical survey. We need more! If you have received a print copy of the survey, or a link to the online survey, please complete and return it. Your organisation could win a prize of £500 if you do so. There’s five other prizes of £100 each up for grabs too.

No Survey? Contact us
If your organisation hasn’t received a survey, please call Waveney Community Forum on 01502 582201, or email [email protected]

Or go to www.waveneycf.org.uk and click on the link. The key thing is, the more the Forum knows, the stronger the case for the sector.

Effect of the Recession
In a recession, the work done voluntarily becomes even more important to our communities’ well-being; sometimes, indeed, vital for its very survival.

Therefore, Waveney Community Forum also wishes to get some solid information about the effect the recession is having on front-line community organisations. Government agencies tend to direct people to voluntary organisations, like CAB. Several local groups are reporting a rapid rise in the number of people needing support and advice. How will the voluntary groups cope with this rise in demand? What effect do they think the additional pressure will have? What will they need to be able to deal with new issues caused by the recession?

Armed with all this information, the Forum will be able to demonstrate to other groups – local councils, partnerships, public bodies, and businesses – how it is an essential part of the economic and social fabric of Waveney.

Every organisation in Waveney
The Forum wants to find every community organisation in Waveney. You may not think you fit the description ‘community organisation’, but if you and your organisation does anything which benefits your community directly – from football club to life-guards to youth dance group to befriending – we’d like to know about you.

All the information will be analysed and then we should have a much clearer picture of the significance, vitality, breadth of provision, and economic worth of the Third Sector, and what effect the recession will have or is having.


John Ellerby (by Mike Howe)

Please contact John Ellerby (Research Officer) 01502 582201 or [email protected]

www.waveneycf.org.uk