Sammy Wilson was in NICVA last week to speak to voluntary and community organisations about the spending review and budget.  The place was packed and we presented the Minister with a document outlining how investing in the voluntary and community sector was a win-win for government and citizens.  You can read more here.   I enjoyed pulling that short document together – its really energising to focus on the important work our members do as solutions to the problem rather than being constantly focusing on the problem.  That document will be the first in a series of four similar publications which will cover the unique contribution of the voluntary and community sector to life here.  The current document broadly focuses on service delivery and the other three will cover volunteering, community development and the social economy.

The idea for the series came from the meetings Seamus and I have been having over the summer with politicians and press. There is an understanding that the sector does good things but no real dept of knowledge of the contribution voluntary and community organisations make.  To be honest I found it really frustrating and had to stop myself getting offended on our member’s behalf!    

As well as the document we presented to the Finance Minister we also sent out a newsletter to all MLA’s which outlined the key points of our smart solutions work and showcased an example of the voluntary and community sector in action in their local constituency.  

 This is all part of our message that hunkering down and letting the economic storm pass, before getting back to business as usual simply isn’t good enough.  In order to back up this message we, as a sector,  need to get much better at telling our story. Hiding behind jargon and/or good intentions won’t really cut it anymore and its time to show our worth.

In other news,

I was pretty disappointed by last weeks Spotlight programme on the spending review.  Mark Carruthers is a great presenter but the format was tired and the interesting debate around funding for health was missing because Minister McGimpsey wasn’t available . The poll was predictable (Question: Would you like to pay more taxes? Answer: No.) and for the life of me I can’t understand why we needed to know a breakdown of how many Catholics and how many Protestants think the cuts are necessary. We have been calling for informed debate on this issue and I was looking forward to the programme - but I gave up halfway through and reached for my book.  Like Groucho Marx said "I find television to be very educating.  Every time somebody turns on the set, I go in the other room and read a book.