Regional Empowerment Programme
Regional Action West Midlands awarded Lead and Accountable Body status for Regional Empowerment Programme
The National Empowerment Partnership through the Community Development Foundation (CDF) have confirmed that RAWM will be both the Lead Agency as well as the Accountable Body for the West Midlands Empowerment Programme. The programme will now be known as Every Voice Counts, and will deliver an exciting three year programme which will take forward the empowerment agenda for the region.
The National Empowerment Partnership – An Introduction
The National Empowerment Partnership (NEP) is a programme committed to supporting and improving empowerment activities across England. It gathers evidence of effective community empowerment activities and promote the powerful benefits of involving communities in decisions that affect them.
The focus is to provide a regional structure for empowerment activities and to steer and lead the empowerment agenda. In particular, to support local authorities and community organisations to increase the number of people who feel they can influence decisions in their locality.
The National Empowerment Partnership programme is managed by the Community Development Foundation and funded by the Department for Communities and Local Government.
The Regional Empowerment Partnerships
The practical work of the NEP programme is carried out by organisations working together in Regional Empowerment Partnerships (REPs). There is a REP in each of the nine English regions. Each REP brings together a range of statutory agencies, voluntary and community organisations, networks and people who are delivering community empowerment activities.
These Regional Empowerment Partnerships use their collective expertise to support local authorities, statutory agencies and community organisations to work together. This helps to give more power to communities and local people to make decisions about what happens in the areas where they live.
West Midlands
In the West Midlands region the programme is managed by Regional Action West Midlands (RAWM) as the accountable body, and the programme is called Every Voice Counts in the West Midlands (EVC).
The EVC programme is overseen by the Every Voice Counts Partnership Strategy Group which has a majority membership from the voluntary sector, but also has representation from Government Office for the West Midlands, Improvement and Efficiency West Midlands (IEWM), Big Lottery Fund, 2 NI4 Local Authorities and West Midlands Local Government Association.
The Empowerment programme is now in its third year and the guidance provided by the funders this year requires activities to be focused in the NI4 Local Authority Areas. NI4 is National Indicator 4 and is one of the key performance indicators that have been chosen by some local authorities as part of their Local Area Agreement. NI4 measures “the % of people who feel that they can influence decisions in their locality”.
For more information contact:
Pauline Dutton,
EVC Programme Co-ordinator
Tel: 0121 359 9100
Email: PaulineD@rawm.co.uk
Pauline will be starting her role as EVC Programme Co-ordinator week commencing 3rd August 2009.
The programme was re-launched on 30 October 2008 and not only provided the opportunity to showcase the EVC programme, but also launched four reports commissioned by the steering group in its first year of operation. These reports as well as presentations from the event are available to download from the new EVC website >>.
