nicvanews November 2010

This month’s round up

Not surprisingly, this month has been all about the upcoming Comprehensive Spending Review. NICVA has been extremely active with its Smart Solutions in Tough Times campaign and seeking to influence our elected representatives to ensure the sector is treated fairly when it comes to the inevitable cuts following the Budget announcement.

As nicvanews goes to press the Budget will have been announced; however we will continue to be active as the hard decisions on spending cuts are made. A big part of the campaign has been the organising of a series of meetings with the Departments, where each gave an insight into their priorities and took feedback from the voluntary and community sector.

In the latest meeting with Finance Minister Sammy Wilson, we welcomed his comments that voluntary and community organisations are “well placed to offer attractive and innovative solutions that will not only save money, but also provide better services for the people of Northern Ireland.” We used this meeting to showcase how investing in the voluntary and community sector is a win-win for government and the people of Northern Ireland.

If you’ve a keen interest in engaging with our elected representatives, the Vital Links programme is for you, and if you’d like to help give the people in power a taste of how the sector operates by ‘hosting a representative’, we’d love to hear from you. See page 19 for details.

Finally, irrespective of cutbacks, everyone’s day to day work carries on and this month’s nicvanews brings its usual raft of training and funding opportunities. Perhaps some of you are in the lucky position to be recruiting staff? If so, Sector Matters, our social economy business, could help you deal smoothly with the process. See page 6 for details.

John McCormick

Got a story to tell?

We welcome your stories for publication. If you would like to submit an article, the copy deadline is the first Tuesday of each month. Please contact the editor, John McCormick, on 028 9087 7777 or email: john.mccormick@nicva.org.

Download nicvanews below