“Anything that brings charities together and provides us with the opportunity to learn from each other is really important.”
Attendee feedback
As part of our commitment to learn from our work, and share our learning with the voluntary sector, we hosted a series of Lunch & Learn sessions for our network of charity partners.
In partnership with four organisations from our first Resilience Fund cohort, the learning series focused on Building resilient organisations, covering topics such as workforce development, impact measurement and governance. The peer-led sessions provided a safe space for partners to connect, share expertise and learn from each other.
Workforce Development
Rickardo Steward, Head of Quality and Innovation at Art Against Knives, and Dr Sab Bham, Founder of Salaam Peace, spoke about their experiences of fostering a culture of learning and development within their organisations.
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Seeing the value of growing their workforce from within, AAK aims for 25% of its workforce to be former beneficiaries.
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Their Youth Employment Framework is aimed at cultivating their homegrown workforce, and recognises that the journey for a young person to become an employee is a long-term project.
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Salaam Peace is formalising a Community Champions programme, where participants will work closely with volunteers and staff members to step into employment.
“The learning around the timeframes for bringing young people into full employment was a good reminder of the need to plan long term.”
Attendee Feedback
Impact Measurement
Elly Townsend, Head of Research and Development at High Trees, explained how her organisation has taken impact measurement from being fragmented and inconsistent to a new framework that captures consistent data across the charity.
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We learnt that to effectively transform inconsistent impact measurement systems, it’s important to take staff on the journey from the outset. By engaging staff in the process from the beginning, High Trees has developed a shared understanding and commitment to impact assessment across the charity.
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A clear outcomes framework and community-centred tools are key to creating a dynamic and responsive approach to monitoring and evaluation.
“We are embarking on developing our new MEL framework in consultation with young adults and this was helpful insight into lessons learnt and things to bear in mind as we shape this project”
Attendee Feedback
Governance
Sarah Emery, CEO of Berkshire Youth, spoke about its governance journey over the past few years, sharing the challenges they’ve faced as an organisation – and how they’ve been resolved.
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To ensure organisations continue to evolve alongside the changing needs of their communities, Sarah spoke of the value in refreshing the Board of Trustees, re-defining responsibilities and improving the induction and on-boarding process.
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Ensuring young people have meaningful opportunities to engage with Trustees and have their voices heard, is key for future resilience.
A big thank you to our speakers for leading these insightful sessions, and to everyone who joined us. We are looking to build on our programme of learning events by hosting other webinar series in the future!