News

8 February 2010: Job Vacancy with Dosti

Sadly Katherine Rogers is leaving Dosti to move to Manchester. We are now recruiting to the post of Community Development Officer. The deadline for applications is 9am, Monday 1 March.

Job advert
Job description

4 February 2010: Dosti is seeking new Executive Members

We are seeking new Executive Members with a fresh outlook and skills to bring to Dosti to join our existing Executive members. All nominations must be from a Dosti member network.

Being_a_member_of_Dostis_Executive_-_whats_involved_2010.pdf
exec_nomination_form_2010-13.pdf

Do you want to support public sector agencies in your area to…

• Think about how open they are to community influence?
• Consider who influences them?
• Understand the importance of moving from individual to community notions of empowerment?
• Develop better quality, more joined up engagement?

The Black Country Take Part Pathfinder is offering free training for people in the Black Country to become a facilitator for ‘echo’ - a discussion-based tool specifically designed to help public agencies explore what ‘influence’ is, assess how open they are to influence from communities and plan how to become more open and responsive. This 2-day training course being held in Wolverhampton on 24 and 25 March 2010 is open to those with training or facilitation experience. It is free to those working in the Black Country.

Echo_facilitator_training_publicity_and_booking_form-Black-Country.pdf (email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it to request a Word file)

“The active citizenship learning programme would be ‘life changing’ for volunteers.”

35 officers from public and voluntary sector organisations across the West Midlands recently made their way to the Beacon Centre for the Blind’s new conference facilities to find out more about Take Part in the Black Country. The Take Part Pathfinder ‘team’ comprises officers from Dosti, changes, Wolverhampton VSC and Wolverhampton Partnership. During the morning session they heard and talked about citizenship typologies, barriers to citizen involvement, power, community empowerment, the Take Part Learning Programme, Voice and Echo.

An afternoon meeting followed for colleagues from outside the Black Country. They will be benefiting from the success of the Black Country Take Part Pathfinder, which is now a Regional Take Part Champion, and has funding to support work with 6 other areas in the region. This is great news for Dosti as it means that more people will have access to Voice facilitator training, and can support community groups and networks with Voice – which was originally developed with and for networks in Dudley.

“I want to use Voice and Echo together – perhaps around a social care issue with our Local Involvement Network and Primary Care Trust.”

“Voice has already highlighted where we are”

Lye & Wollescote Partnership members and officers who support the partnership recently took the opportunity to find out how the partnership could be more influential. Katherine from Dosti delivered an introductory Voice session, which prompted much discussion about what influence is, and how influential Lye & Wollescote Partnership is. The group were joined by more local residents and officers for an afternoon action planning session facilitated by Lorna from Dosti. They developed 12 month actions for the partnership around engaging young people, bringing communities together, sharing information and identifying community need.

“After today I will keep on learning and developing networks to facilitate support and enable the community”

"Excellent for networking" "I learnt a lot about engagement" "Extremely useful"

53 officers from a range of organisations in Dudley participated in the launch of Dudley's Community Engagement Network. They came together for a morning at Dudley College and enjoyed a speed networking session, took opportunities to find out about 'in it together' and training and support for community engagement being made available. They also developed a recipe for future networking events. Click here to see a photo report from the event: Network Launch Photo Report

On a wintery Tuesday event, 14 active members of community groups in North Dudley convened at the Kent Street Centre to find out ways to be an effective representative. Lorna and Katherine from Dosti were invited by the council’s Community Renewal Team to deliver the training session. An outcome of the evening was that the forum elected a chair, who will represent them at the North Dudley Community Renewal Working Group. The group had spent some time discussing how representatives are selected, and what the scope of the role would be. The Forum will continue to work up a role description for their new chair, using the training materials to support this.