We caught up with Mohammed Mansour, who is the Head of VCS Development at Hackney CVS, to talk about the work that the Social Value Exchange is doing in the borough.
Can you tell us your role is at Hackney CVS?
My role mainly focuses on building the capacity of voluntary and community sector organisations operating in Hackney and surrounding areas. We do this by providing advice and support to charity leaders and the VCS workforce through one-to-one intervetions, fundraising and partnership support, as well as training and mentoring on core competencies for working in the charity sector. For more information about our full offer, please visit our website.
2. What’s new at the CVS? We know Jake Ferguson has recently left – how has the organisation reacted to his departure.
Although Jake has recently left Hackney CVS, his legacy and momentum will remain with us driving us to follow in his footsteps. He helped Hackney CVS build a strong foundation to support the local sector towards achieving a fair hackney for everyone. We now have a new chief executive, Tony Wong – who was the programme director for Connect Hackney that’s part of the National Lottery ageing better initiative.
Since 2019, we have been working to 4 Strategic Objectives in line with our Strategic Plan 2019-2022. We are now conducting a user survey to see how well we have done against our objectives. Which will also help set the new strategic objectives for the next three years 2022-2025.
Strategic Objective 1: Supporting stronger, thriving voluntary and community organisations
Strategic Objective 2: Developing successful delivery partnerships
Strategic Objective 3: Strengthening the sector’s voice to effect change
Strategic Objective 4: Being a sustainable, responsible organisation driven by our values.
3. Given the impact of Covid and your proximity to Hackney’s local communities, what do communities and the sector need to move forward?
When the Covid-19 pandemic struck in 2020, Hackney’s voluntary and community organisations sprang into action. Going far beyond what they were funded to deliver, they responded rapidly to unprecedented changes, adapting their expertise to meet urgent and changing needs.
Embedded in communities, and identifying with communities, the expertise and reach of these organisations brought critical services to those that needed them most.
At Hackney CVS we also sprang into action. We dug deep, focussed and pivoted our many services to adapt to what our communities and local organisations needed. We brought in over £1 million in new funding for our local organisations and created new spaces for people to come together at a neighbourhood level. Building on our strong relationships, we collaborated across all sectors and across our diverse communities to meet needs and influence services, from the vaccination programme to Hackney Council’s response to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Some of the key needs that still exist as a result of the pandemic:
– Food poverty and access to hot/cooked meals.
– Resources to access the internet, which included phones, tablets, laptop and broadband connections.
– Digital literacy and online awareness.
– Emotional and mental wellbeing support.
– Befriending and social support.
Moreover, the impact of Covid-19 has made a large shift in the funding landscape compared to previous years, as most of funders prioritised funding for Covid related project and activities. However, this also created a conundrum for micro and small organisations where most of their funding that was received during the pandemic is due to end by March 2022. It is safe to say that funding has always been a much needed resource for those organisations, however it’s even needed more than ever.
4. The Social Value Exchange – how can Hackney’s community organisations get involved?
The Social Value Exchange is leveraging some of the council’s procurement spend to incentivise their suppliers to make contributions to our local community organisation. To see if you can get free resources via the Social Value Exchange, the first thing you can do is sign up and the team will be in touch.
Or you can also get in touch with the team at hello@socialvalueexchange.org.
Thanks Mohammed!
We’d love to hear from you…
Get in touch with the team.
Email: hello@socialvalueexchange.org
Telephone: 020 3488 6223