Spotlight on the expertise of organisations supporting diverse communities
In my last blog I wrote about the internal interviews we did as part of our research and co-creation project we have commissioned at the Voluntary and Community Sector Emergencies Partnership.
Remember why?
No? Let me remind you:
Because we want to:
1. Understand community organisations and networks’ needs around dealing with emergencies and attaining support.
What are some of the needs and specific challenges of local organisations which serve more at risk and at times marginalised communities during emergencies and non-emergency time.
2. Identify opportunities for optimising a partnership like ours to better meet organisations’ needs.
Our ultimate aim is to improve support services for disproportionately impacted communities in times of emergency.
What have we been doing?
We wanted to build on what we’ve learnt from the interviews with the organisations/community groups and ideate what an ideal emergency partnership could look like. We also wanted to get some feedback on our current request for support tool: https://vcsep.org.uk/request-support
Ashley, Anna, Amrit and Mieka between them carried out 4 co-creation sessions. We brought together 12 different organisations and community groups, for example those led by and for disabled people and people in the asylum process.
This collaboration between the groups was great to witness. In the session I observed, group members built on each other’s points as well as brought in valuable expertise and experience.
Anna started by presenting a summary of the interviews they had given previously with themed findings. She checked in whether they agreed with the themes. They decided which finding to explore — for example ‘get help and information to help prepare for an emergency’. Using Miro as a tool, they worked though how this could work, coming up with lots of ideas. I particularly liked that it put groups such as there’s at the heart of the design. The group I was in struggled to think of the answers to how would this example look like if done badly?
‘We’re all solution focused’
was one person’s comment. They were able to come up with good examples of this in the end — and looked happy to move onto the ideas and story-boarding section.
What now?
After all these sessions — Ashley then used all this insight to further refine and come up several concepts and ideas to test. We are at the point of testing these out with some of the groups and stakeholders in the Emergencies Partnership too.
Thank you
A big thank you to the organisations who have given their time and expertise so far to take part, as well as all of those within the Emergencies Partnership who continue to engage and contribute.
Where can I find out more?
We’ll keep updating our website here: https://vcsep.org.uk/equality
