Rawmarsh People Project
During February we launched the Rawmarsh People´s Project at Dale Road´s People Centre. The project aims to engage and build the confidence of a team of 'community learning advocates' from the Rawmarsh community by delivering a development opportunity with the potential for providing employment and accreditation.
This is a joint project with partners including GROW (Giving Real Opportunities to Women) who have secured Academy for Community Leadership funding which will support some training and Rotherham LEA Lifelong Learning Team who are able to fund residential and day places at Northern College. Dearne Valley College were also in attendance and have shown interest in recruiting these local people to promote learning opportunities throughout their community.
Word of mouth proved much more effective than flyers in bringing people into the event and most of the people attending came because of their personal link and confidence in Denise who runs the 'Learning Space' at Bellows Road Shopping Centre - In otherwise through their trust of an existing community learning advocate who lives and breathes enthusiasm for learning and people every day in her work.
The first event was a great experience full of activity with people standing up and presenting their own thoughts to the whole group - a first time for many. Interestingly we avoided 'dominating' the event as a school since we are aware that adults may feel real barriers in terms of accessing and accepting the school as a community provider. However, on the day we were only too pleased to find that these local people were hoping to learn what we could offer them and are planning with Denise to come as a group to visit the school's facilities and found out what we can provide.
Feedback suggests that the group want to continue and would initially like to spend a day session at Northern College devloping their ICT skills and brushing up their confidence - perhaps in a combined way through a session on presenting. As a school we will partner in the delivery of this and take the opportunity to build further links with this group of enthusiastic and vocal(!) local people.