Your Community Your Voice
There are lots of ways that you can get involved in your community. You could support your community with your feet, running about the football pitch on a Sunday morning for example. Your hands could be helping your community rid itself of nuisance litter, or grow local food in your community allotment. You voice though, well that is one of the most powerful ways to support your community.
The Apathy Myth
At SVE we often hear that people these days just aren’t bothered about their community little they used to be. Less likely to help out or take a stand on something important to them. We (politely) beg to differ. We know you care deeply about a whole range of issues. Jobs, greenspace, education, health, crime, sports, recycling. We could go on and on. The apathy myth comes out as a direct consequence of people being consulted on issues that others think they should care about, rather than what’s important to that individual. The myth rears its head again when standard consultation methods fail to take into account where and how people spend their time. ‘It’s a real shame that we didn’t have more people turn up to our meeting at 3pm in the Community Centre. People must not care what happens to their local community. It’s apathy isn’t it?’
SVE will be working with other Community Planning Partners to make sure that true community involvement and empowerment is threaded through the way we all work when we deliver public and voluntary services. If you would like to be involved in this work please get in touch.
Have a look at some of our partners website for handy tools and information for effective community engagement -
- Scottish Community Development Centre
- CLD Standards Council
- Place Based Standard
- National Standards for Community Engagement
Stirling Council
SVE works in close partnership with Stirling Council. Stirling Council has a wide range of ways to get involved in local decision making, you could respond to a consultation, attend a meeting of Stirling Council or its’ committees or contact your Councillors who you elect to represent you.
The Community Engagement Team provide community development support to communities and community organisations across the Stirling Council area as well other responsibilities. They manage a range of grants on behalf of Stirling Council, and support local community planning and all area community planning forums. The team can provide a wide range of support to help communities engage with others to shape and influence change with the aim of improving the quality of life for people in their community and addressing disadvantage. This includes:
- Information on Communities and promotion of community issues
- Support and advice on a range of issues such as governance (starting a group or activity)
- engagement (involving people)
- funding and finance (grants and advice)
- project development (developing local plans and projects) and partnership working (being involved and influencing decisions)
- Work with Community Councils
- Training and resources (Building Stronger Communities)
- Assistance with community surveys and looking at community needs
Your Community Council
Every community in the Stirling area has a community council. These represent the communities' views to the local authority and other public bodies. They also have an important role to play in commenting on how plans and issues affect their communities. The next Community Council Election are due to be held in August 2018. You can find out more about your Community Council here.
Local Community National Influence
The issues that you and your community care about might be tackled locally, but there is a good chance that some of these issues will require you to engage on a national level. SVE can help you to engage with national policy and decision making. Citizen Space, the Consultation Hub for the Scottish Government is where you will find all of the current and expired consultations and summaries of responses. During the policy creation process the Scottish Government wants to hear from interested individuals and communities to ensure that the policy that they put forward has the desired impact. Engaging in Scottish Government consultations can be an effective way of putting across the views of your community.
Live consultations which may interest you
You can find these consultations and many more here.
The Scottish Parliament was established in 1999 to debate issues and make laws for Scotland. It is made up of 129 elected representatives, who are known as Members of the Scottish Parliament or MSPs. Every person in Scotland has 8 MSPs; 1 constituency MSP, and 7 Regional List MSP’s. You can find contact details for all your MSP’s here.
Contacting your MSP is just one way to get involved with the Scottish Parliament. You can also
- Engage with the Committees of the Scottish Parliament when they are looking for evidence on an inquiry or bill, Submit, or support a Public Petition. You only need 1 signature to submit a petition!
- Join a Cross Party Group- there are over 90 CPG’s on a whole range of issues so you are bound to find one for your area of interest!
- Hold an event for your organisation at Parliament- just ask an MSP to sponsor it for you.
Find out more about getting involved with the Scottish Parliament here.
