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Money
The National Lottery Charities
Board has approved our annual report to them and agreed our
targets for the next 12 months, they congratulated us on obtaining
Charity Status and wished us well with our work. We have 2 years
of grant money to come from them. Our dues contributions dropped a
little this year, mostly due to financial difficulties in some of
our poorer groups. We hope those who haven't paid dues yet are
planning to do so? Barrow Cadbury, Barclays Bank, St Agatha's and
the Diocese of Hallam all contributed to our budget. And we thank
them for that. We are working on an application to Learning and
Skill Council for another full time Organiser to work on a low pay
action we have undertaken in partnership with Industrial Mission,
Church Action on Poverty and the Unions.
 The
action was initially to try and encourage Sheffield City Council
to make Bernard rd incinerator safe and to look at becoming a
recycling City. In August 2001 Onyx bought the incinerator from
the Council and proposal for a bigger incinerator went forward.
IMPACT joined in a campaign to try and stop Onyx getting planning
permission - which as we all know failed when 5 Labour Councillors
voted in favour of the plans. Is it a loss? Did we fail? No, no
and no..the Planning Hearing was torture, we witnessed the sham
that democracy has become but we were well organised, articulate,
respectable and fair. Our team made a valiant effort and if
justice had prevailed we should had won hands down. What has the
action done? We have had members attending Council meetings,
Primary Care Trust meetings, Area Panel meetings and Waste
Strategy meetings. We have gathered almost 2000 postcards in our
Autumn "Good To Talk Rubbish Campaign" families who are
willing to recycle and hundreds of our members objected to the
Onyx Planning application. We have built relationships with
Primary Care Trust members, Shiregreen residents group PLAG, young
people from Sheffield College, GreenPeace, Friends of the Earth,
academics at Sheffield University and City Councillors. RABID have
produced a Waste Strategy Document for the City and have become
experts in incineration, planning policy and waste management. Due
to our intervention a Health Impact Assessment is underway
regarding the landfill site at Shiregreen. The group itself has
transformed from a dis- organised bunch of radicals into people
who are confident speakers, strategic planners and leaders in the
public sphere -and are still a bunch of wonderful radicals. It ain‹t
over yet - see my next report for more details!
Stocksbridge
by-pass
Kieran and Thomas Moore died on
Stocksbridge by-pass earlier this year making over 20 victims on a
road that should never have been built the way it was. St Ann‹s
headed up a Public Meeting which over a hundred people attended.
The Grandfather of the twins brought the meeting to a standstill
when he recalled the day the boys died. A massive press campaign
ensured the By-pass would not come off the political agenda, nor
would we. A small and determined team made sure that the Police
and Highways Agency were not allowed to brush the deaths under the
carper or call them "a statistical blip " In June the
team finally met the Police who initially thought we were a bunch
of raving residents, Marie Hands a new leader from St Ann‹s
stunned them when she arrived with 6 month old Liam and proceed to
articulate her fears. Work started on the By-pass at the beginning
of October the plan is to spend over 1 million pounds on safety
measures; state of the art cameras, clearer markings and rumble
strips. The team are currently negotiating lowering the speed
limit.
Financial
Exclusion
In January Barclays agreed a grant
to cover the salary of a Financial Exclusion Worker. The worker
was to support the development of an ethical loan company, support
for Credit Unions and financial literacy. Brian Parfett and Ian
McCullough started secondments for the same piece of work. This
has been a massive undertaking for us the networking, planning and
action has been tremendous and thankfully with some incredible
results - A Business Plan for the Ethical Loan Company, an
application to Yorkshire Forward for 2.7 million pounds, a strong
a vibrant Credit Union point at Arbourthorne Primary School with
over 100 members, 80 of which are children. The point is ran by
Mums and supported by the school, some of the Mums will attend the
financial exclusion seminar on 22 November. ANGLE Credit Union has
managed to get a £5k grant and has been told that they will
receive a three year grant from the local forum if they apply this
is mostly due to the support of Eileen Butler and Maureen Aitken.
Sister Eileen rang in September to see if we could help with an
action regarding bus passes.
Some of the parents from Holy
Family had been told that they would not receive bus passes from
September, all the families were on benefits or low incomes. After
phones calls to the LEA and Councillors the Mums wrote to the LEA
explaining the situation. The parents have been given passes for 1
year, we have agreed that we will help them meet the LEA to
explain what stress they've been put under but also that there is
no way they can get their children to school without bus passes. |
On 22nd of November we will
convene a Financial Exclusion Seminar with very influential people
from DFES, City Council, Barclays, Sheffield Employment Bond,
Business in the Community, Local Government, Churches Regional
Commission, Housing Associations, Primary Care Trusts, Burngreave
New Deal for Communities, Sheffield Credit Union Development
Agency, Church Action on Poverty, Single Regeneration Unit, Heeley
Development Trust, Manor and Castle Development Trust and more..
The aim is to make sure Financial Exclusion gets put on the
political agenda so we can influence funding and policy. This
action is huge we have fairly and squarely raised the profile of
the struggle of those people who are living life in debt and in
the hands of some very shady people.
Training
35 people attended training in the
principles of organising at Ranmoor Hall in February. 90 people
attended our Conference in May, establishing that IMPACT has the
power to convene and that we are a thinking organisation. Staff
have attended training sessions with Adrian Scott, and seminars
with the Rev‹d Martin Percy and Gerry Flanangan.
IMPACT has supported the Islamic
Society of Great Britain during Islam Awareness Week and a raising
awareness campaign over a weekend in September. Sister Eileen
Keating made a wonderful speech regarding her work with Refugees.
We still struggle to engage with Leaders beyond Abdul Gooljar and
though we have made some allies it is a struggle to encourage them
to get involved in the wider work of IMPACT. During the summer
Brian Parfett and I met Dr Kamal Halbawy one of the most Senior
and respected Muslim scholars in the country. He is offering to
come and give a lecture in February.
On September 11th IMPACT and
Sheffield Interfaith organised an act of rememberence in the Peace
Gardens. All the major faith offered prayers and reflections,
Philip Jacob organised music and hymns and Robert Beard was the
mc. Many representatives of the Churches and the City Council
attended the event which was filmed by Yorkshire
Television.
People in the Peace Gardens joined
in the event and when a minutes Silence was called for everyone
joined in. It was a very memorable occasion.
Congregational
Development
In February I started work with
Sacred Heart Hillsborough using Gerry Flanagan‹s basic model of
Congregational Development. This first attempt was pretty much
trial and error, and though the results were that Sacred Heart
will become members in December I felt it could have been better.
The greatest joy has been deepening my relationship with Father
Shaun and sharing stories with the small group that have become
the IMPACT team. The second session has been with St Pauls,
Wordsworth Avenue and it was very different due to the fact that
they are now without a Priest. The four weeks I did with them was
a joy and during the evaluation they asked that I look at ways of
supporting them through the weeks and months to follow. This week
St Paul‹s elected delegates couldn‹t attend the strategy team
and two of the ladies who were part of the CD course stood in,
they came with 3 actions they wanted us to support them with! I
have just started the course with St Augustine‹s and so far so
good. I hope to start with St Mary‹s Beighton in the New Year
and hopefully St John‹s Ranmoor after that.
Roger has brought together a small
group of Leaders from the Trade Unions, Industrial Mission and
Sheffield CAP to look at the effect unjust work practices have on
people. The Learning and Skills Council have shown an interest and
are looking at funding the campaign. The campaign will start with
a low wage mapping exercise undertaken by IMPACT, the Centre for
Public Services and the Low Pay Unit, we then hope to have a
member of staff to work with those in unjust circumstances to take
action around the issues that come out of the report. The Strategy
Team have voted unanimously to support the action.
St Peters Abbeydale asked me to
work on pulling together a forum for their area, due to work
commitments this was passed to Roger Wilde. He spent October
focusing on Abbeydale and has arranged a date for the first
gathering of interested organisations. This is also being
supported by Simunye.
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