Joseph Kenny Community Summer Report

My 3 main tasks for the summer were to:

Research and investigate how other counties are implementing community resilience

Organize a community resilience stall in Great Yarmouth Market Place Organize a Rest Centre Exercise at Ormiston Venture Academy in Gorleston

1) Research and investigate how other counties are implementing community resilience

I undertook a web based research project of examples of community resilience projects mainly in the U.K, but also from around the world.

I made a summary list and presented my findings at the North Yarmouth community resilience meeting. All the case studies can be found in full on my desktop.

Through my research I discovered information on the new Environment Agency widget, an application that can be installed on any website that gives information of flood activity in the area, and is automatically updated every 15 minutes. I contacted David Wiles at the Borough Council Media department about getting the widget established on a number of great Yarmouth based websites. It has been implemented on the Great Yarmouth Borough Council Website, and is in talks at the minute about establishing it on the Mercury News Website.

2) Market place stall.

There is a community resilience stall held each summer in the market place in Great Yarmouth.

The date was first set for the 6th August with attendance from the Environment Agency and Norfolk recovery. However due to difficulties with obtaining a market placement, by the time we actually received one gave little time left to inform volunteers. This meant many already had plans and so unfortunately could not attend. Due to the lack of volunteers the date for the market place stall had to be postponed.

A second date was chosen for the market place event; the 14th September. This was chosen for two reasons; one because it coincided with the Norfolk resilience week, and, two, because it was a Wednesday which is market day and so we hoped it would attract a higher foot fall. It also meant are stall placement was booked far in advance and so had plenty of time to inform volunteers.

I also had interest from Anglian water, and the flood advisory service, but due to limited space they were not able to attend.

After the event I wrote up a report highlighting the event, observations from the day and some positives and negatives that I drew from it.

Organising this event did provide a number of learning opportunities. Through doing this I learnt how to organise and coordinate an event with multiple organisations and people. Although the rescheduling was not ideal it again gave me valuable insight on preparation and renegotiation to come to a decision that suited everyone.

3) Rest Centre Exercise

The rest centre was set to take place on the 3rd September at Ormiston Venture Academy. In the lead up to the event there were a number of jobs that needed undertaking.

First I organised a meeting with Sam Thomson, the finance director, Jacob, and myself to discuss the exercise, the rest entre box they had and how we were going to provide refreshments.

The rest centre was checked by Jacob, who noted what was missing from the Box at the school and we then collected the missing items to refill the rest centre box for the event. I put myself at the head of organising the food order and recruiting volunteers. The food order turned out to be more difficult to organize than anticipated. With it being the holidays a number of people involved in processing the food order where on leave. It was especially difficult with uncertainty on numbers. The food order eventually went through.

To help recruit volunteers I contacted people through links I’ve made this summer and promoted it at the MESH Funday. I also made use of the Community Resilience map in the Comeunity office to contact a number of groups who may have an interest in being involved. This activity also helped update the map, adding contact details to the map, and also removing names of some groups that had dissolved. The most notable achievements of this were contact with the Rotary club, the Red Cross, and Network Yarmouth who posted an article about the event.

By the day of the event I had a list of 26 volunteers who had confirmed their attendance. On the day itself we had a total of 23 volunteers arrive.

After the event I wrote up a Rest Centre report evaluating the effectiveness of the rest centre, illustrating some of the positives and negatives of the day, and some of the feedback the volunteers gave. Organising the rest centre, again, has provided me with valuable learning. Trying to find volunteers helped me to think of new and interesting routes to be able to contact possible volunteers, using local connections and groups, and through a number of means of contact from email and phone to social media. It also raised a number of problems for which I had to overcome. The major one being the food order which at first appeared to be an easy job, actually turned out to be very difficult, having to contact and organize a number of people who each were on leave at different points making it very difficult to collaborate. It has taught me that even the simplest tasks can be difficult, and that they need to have a keen eye kept on them to make sure they are completed effectively.

Extra projects:

Jacob and I put together a stall on the MESH Funday which helped to promote community resilience. Our stall contained a number of different objects and people were asked which of the objects they would choose to have in their emergency kit. We would then discuss their choices. Some people mentioned this was insightful and really got them thinking about emergency plans in their own homes. We also handed out the leaflets on the 5 simple steps to prepare for in an emergency. Jacob also created a Magikarp out of papier-mâché which people could stick notes to saying what they liked about the area and what they thought they needed improving. Unfortunately this idea was also in use at the entrance of the Funday and so people where less responsive to that part of our stall. Perhaps better communication with other stalls would be useful in the future.

Although Anglian waters were not able to attend the market place stall they did hold another stall at the sea front which I took part in. The Object of the stall was to help raise awareness of the issues of flushing disposable wipes and putting food waste down the drains. This helped illustrate to people both the environmental impact this has and the flood risk it can pose. This was also attended by the BBC and was shown on Look East that night.

During my time at Comeunity I have also collected a number of contacts and collated them into a spreadsheet which shall hopefully be of use to future interns.

I organised the first community resilience focus group which took place on the 31st August to discuss the role of community resilience volunteers and how to attract and keep more volunteers in the future. These focus group meetings shall continue into the future, the next being scheduled for the 28th September.

During my last week at Comeunity I helped PoNY (people of North Yarmouth) begins to promote the Tesco Bags of Help project, helping them to create facebook and tweeter pages as well as designing them a poster.

Thanks:

I would like to give thanks once again to Daniel and Louise for offering me the placement and another special thanks to Daniel and the whole Community team for all their help and support they have given me and for creating a friendly and welcoming environment for me to work in.