Good afternoon everyone. Rural Community Network and DTNI have - - PDF document

Good afternoon everyone. Rural Community Network and DTNI have enjoyed long friendship and I am delighted to have been asked to be a part of today’s event. Rural community network has campaigned and supported community endeavour in rural areas for over 24 years. The organisation has developed an expertise around rural needs and has worked to showcase best practice models of rural community development - which have proven that where communities work together to resolve local issues, local solutions can be found. Importantly we believe that we have worked hard to champion the needs of regional towns, villages and dispersed settlements at government levels - to ensure they are given consideration when policy and services are being delivered on the ground. This week saw the Rural Needs Bill move through the ARD committee, make its way through a debate on the floor of the NI Assembly and we are keeping our fingers crossed that this bill will finally put the consideration of rural needs on a legislative footing in this region before the end of next month. This is a hugely important milestone for us and it has been a driving force behind the work of this organisation in the past 24 years. So where are we today…24 years after we were first established? The answer is we are, like many others hanging on by a thread! It is a strange time for this sector and for this organisation. With 24 years of service to over 300 rural community groups we find ourselves at the mercy of the policy makers in government, fighting for our existence and hoping someone in government will remember and value the organisation that we are and the membership that we serve. Yes, we are an organisation which has built its own building –we own this building and even some land around it! We have healthy reserves and we have a strong reputation as a ‘can do’ and a ‘go to’ agency. But in the last four years a systematic withdrawal of core funding (65% cut) for this organisation has seen us become increasingly dependent on SLAs with NDPBs, small pieces of contract work and sporadic one off funding streams. It has been a time of

great uncertainty and where other organisations have closed we have remained capable of washing our faces – but only just. So why is this important? I believe that the sector I work for is a crucial and fundamental part of civic

• society. I believe that it has a role to champion the poor, the vulnerable and

the marginalised. I believe we have a strong purpose as a voice for social justice and we have a fundamental duty to exert positive influence on social, economic and environmental development. We have a role as independent critics of government, we have a role as supporters of local communities undertaking voluntary endeavour and we have a role to respond to meet the needs of those who are unable to meet their own needs. The third sector that I believe in has a duty to challenge injustice and poor policy making and it can also endorse good policy making where policy has worked for those who are normally excluded or marginalised. We can showcase new innovative ways of working and prove how, when local communities are resourced and supported through empowerment programmes, they can deliver great outcomes for local people. Critical to all of this is the independence of our sector. An independent sector can hold a true position of challenge to government/policy makers, it can legitimately raise concerns on behalf of those who are at risk and it should be in a position to pursue the aims of the organisation without compromise. This sector needs to be resourced, understood and supported by the governments which are voted into power. Organisations like ours cannot raise funds from the general public – we cannot compete for funding with the cancer charities the animal welfare charities out there nor should we have to. As an infrastructural support agency the government should both value and resource us in the work that we do – I don’t ask for full funding but I ask for enough funding to support the services we provide for our membership – I ask for funding support which has a built in flexibility to enable us to be responsive to our members’ needs. I am happy to be monitored, audited and checked in all that we do and I am happy to have targets, outcomes and impacts

measured as long as the relationship with our funder understands that our loyalty lies first with our membership and secondly with our funder. But in the last 18 years of my working career I have witnessed a chameleon sector… a sector that has seen organisations change purpose, compromise values and principles and accept contracts that challenge their core ambitions in order to sustain their organisation. The sector has been turned somewhat into a service delivery agent for government –sustained by contracts and service level agreements which worry more about numbers than they do about the quality of the work or the impact of the intervention. While the sector is populated by people who are driven by core values and principles the pragmatists realise that survival means accepting the service level agreements in the hope that they can add value and deliver additional support through small bespoke funding streams which will deliver the core mission of the

• rganisation.

The sector, us included, has become over dependent on contracted state funding and has then been all too susceptible to changes in government policy

• r direction.

A sector which has been known to take risks, deliver significant social change and which has fought hard to retain its independence has been somewhat ‘housetrained’ by government contracts….. The risk adverse attitude of government has largely curbed the innovative, risk taking nature of this sector. We know well that innovation fails, we know too that risks don’t always pay off but what we know best is that the learning from these risk taking ventures often shapes and supports better knowledge and better thinking when we take the next steps or the next risk. These learning

• pportunities are being lost – the fear of failure has driven out valuable
• pportunities for reflection and learning.

As spending levels decrease, risk taking becomes more difficult and the safe

• ptions are the ones that continue to be resourced……the sector becomes a

cheap delivery option and we begin to see the survival of the fittest but not necessarily survival of the best that this sector has to offer.

For RCN funding from the Department of Agriculture and then the DSD meant stability for us. We had a 3 year funding contract in place which meant we could put our heads down and get on with the work – we were flattered at the seeming endorsement of our organisation by those in authority. We felt we had a credibility, and a legitimacy as the investment was made in our work. We gained valuable contacts within the department and we undertook our challenge function with relish and with the knowledge that the department welcomed our views on their policy making. The meeting of our core costs also freed-up time for us to explore investment from other funders for one-off risk- taking projects. We sought money for research, for pilot programmes and to undertake to challenge poor policy by working to prove where it was failing through live case studies. Our membership too saw endorsement by the Departments’ investment as a sign that we were a credible organisation which had a role to play on their behalf at the top table of government policy influence. In other words it was worthwhile paying their membership fees!! But the cost of core funding should also be recognised…these are generalised as they haven’t all been experienced by us but we are very aware of their impact on our membership and those we work with…. We have seen mission drift, we have seen inflexibility in target setting and changes to contracts which have caused terrible pain to those delivering them, We have seen tempered voices within the sector – not reacting to poor policy

• r bad practice for fear of reprisals. We have witnessed unmet needs in

communities as a result of rigidity of contracts. We have seen those in governance roles risk everything to meet the confines

• f a contract while also working hard to meet the needs of the local

community – two things which shouldn’t be in opposition but which may have come to be through poor negotiation and poor understanding of roles. So what are the likely solutions? Increasingly freedom for action, voice and purpose in the third sector comes to those with ‘free reserves’ or money with no strings attached……we see the rise

and rise of ‘social enterprise’ within the sector as a driver for significant change. Groups realise that the freest resource they have access to is their ‘earned income’ be that from significant fundraising efforts in their locality or from earned income from the sale of goods and services. This money they then invest in the work which they believe needs to be done to meet local need. I urge caution in this ambition. While the rise of social enterprise is necessary worthwhile and to be praised…..not all organisations can pursue this option. Nor should they be expected to. Social enterprise is not a panacea for the sector’s resource needs. In rural areas the growth of social enterprise has enabled communities to sustain vital core services. But the loss of services has been largely due to economic market failures and much rural social enterprise exploits voluntary effort as a compulsory factor in making the enterprise work –for example - free voluntary labour in running the local shop means sustaining the existence of the shop but it would never sustain a minimum-wage bill! The move to transfer community assets into community ownership is to be largely welcomed - it will provide opportunities for communities to gain

• wnership of resources which may well sustain those communities and

services for those communities long into the future. It will support local communities to meet unmet need in their areas and it will help to create

• pportunities for those who are in need of support and help.

We know the success stories of the groups who have established much needed affordable housing on vacant land, who have developed wind turbines on rural land which pays for them to undertake local community development work and in some instances pays for the employment of a development officer. We have heard of the group who leased the local swimming pool which was in danger of closing and made it work for the local community in a way which not only makes a profit but which makes it an essential community employer for over 50 people. But again as a sector we need to urge caution in the exploitation of voluntary endeavour and we need to provide timely support those who are undertaking

these ventures to grasp a full understanding of the long term undertaking for local communities. As assets become available for local communities to access we need to support these groups to undertake due diligence exercises to recognise and uncover liabilities of taking on such assets, to understand the business planning to resource the realisation of the asset, to fully think through the long term commitment they are making and understand the governance and liability of what they are taking on. We need to resource them to challenge the legal structures under which they will be asked to operate –dare I say it, almost every group in NI is a charity or nothing!! Other option do exist and should be explored. We need to have agencies such as DTNI and RCN adequately resourced to provide that expertise, knowledge sharing and networking so these groups can learn from those who have gone before them and those who have tried and

• failed. Community groups needs access to agencies such as our – DTNI and

RCN and other who can sit along-side them giving impartial and independent advice to move them forward in their ventures….that won’t happen unless government realises the valuable work we do and invests in us accordingly.