City Action organise regular, half-day tours of the City fringe Boroughs, offering a unique insight into the challenges faced by charitable organisations within those Boroughs. As the newest member of the City Action team, I was delighted to be able to spend a sunny morning attending the most recent tour of Lambeth on the 4th June.

Lambeth enjoys great affluence in certain pockets of the Borough such as the Southbank; indeed it even plays host to the London Eye. Despite these ever-popular landmarks, Lambeth is the 5th most deprived borough in London. Perversely however, it also receives the least volunteer support from City businesses. The City Action Community Tour of Lambeth aimed to raise the profile of its community activity, with the modest hope of reversing these stats.

The Tour commenced its journey at Guildhall, leaving swiftly at 8.30am for the first destination, Lillian Bayliss Sports Action Zone. We heard from Karim, who gave us an enthusiastic presentation describing the wide variety of active projects that they provide to the people of Lambeth. He stressed the important role that sport and physical activity can play in aiding social inclusion and community cohesion.

Our next destination on the Tour was the Karibu Education Centre in Brixton, a lively community hub, providing young people with the educational & social skills needed to move them safely into adulthood. En route to the Karibu Centre, we received a talk from Iago Griffiths from Lambeth Council, who provided a general overview of Lambeth, in particular what challenges the third sector faces and how Lambeth Council supports their local community. Once at the Karibu Centre, we were greeted by big smiling faces and delicious cakes – always a winning combination! We had a brief talk from Leah Levane, Head of Communities and Neighbourhoods at Lambeth Council, followed by an inspiring presentation from Elaine Holness, the Project Co-ordinator at Karibu, explaining just how essential their support and facilities are to the local community.

After saying our goodbyes to the Karibu Centre, we had another en-route talk, this time from Nick Mason, Chair of the Lambeth Summer Projects, an innovative youth engagement charity in partnership with Lambeth schools and the Metropolitan Police. He talked in particular about their Growing against Gangs programme, providing life skills to pupils to help them avoid involvement in delinquent or anti-social behaviour, violence or gang membership and ‘signpost’ them towards positive activities.

Our final stop of the morning was at the Waterloo Action Centre. For 35 years the centre has been committed to supporting their local community in a variety of ways, offering assistance to people of all ages, irrespective of their problem or query. What particularly struck me was the variety of information and help they offer for such a small community organisation. They even have a weekly surgery where anyone can come in from the street and obtain free legal advice from a dedicated team of qualified lawyers (all volunteers of course).

By 12.45pm our Tour ended where it had begun, at Guildhall. I personally found the morning not only enjoyable but also thought provoking. Many of the City firms present have already expressed a keen interest in supporting the three fantastic organisations we visited. Indeed, one major financial consultancy that attended described the tour as “incredibly insightful and inspiring…This tour allowed me to open my eyes to what’s available”. This is real testament, in my view, to the tremendous value of these City Action Tours.

We are so pleased to see that new volunteering matches and activity are already emerging from our annual reception event, which took place on 12th March 2009. With over 60 businesses and Livery companies in attendance, it was clear that enthusiasm around employee volunteering is very much alive and well!

We have picked up messages from our clients, which imply that Corporate Community Involvement needs to be flexible as possible at the moment, to ensure momentum remains and involvement continues: our annual reception event focused on simple and convenient ways to make valuable contributions within the City fringe boroughs.

The Lord Mayor of London, Alderman Ian Luder, very kindly delivered a keynote speech about his Financial Literacy Initiative, emphasising that Financial Literacy is essential to our future, and that you don’t need to be a financial services expert to help young people improve their numeracy skills.  Anyone who knows how to budget, what a good deal is on a loan, and why you need to save for a pension, can help out by giving as little as one hour of time a month.

The Lord Mayor also highlighted that we now live in a digital age where communication does not have to be face-to-face. Corporate volunteers can offer skilled support to a charity or individual via telephone and e-mail. For example, setting up a database, creating the structure for a business or marketing plan, mentoring a young person or proof reading documents. We recently launched the concept of ‘Virtual Volunteering’ and have developed an icon on our online volunteering opportunities bulletin, enabling visitors to identify volunteering opportunities that can be undertaken remotely.

The event was also a chance for City Action to thank our members for their contribution to our success over the past year. In the last 12 months City Action has seen a 55% growth in the placement of skills-based volunteers from 2007; and in the last quarter of 2008, City Action saw a 40% increase in new volunteering activity. However, we don’t want to become complacent in this ever-changing climate. We must continually review our services to ensure an even stronger City Action community in the coming year.

The areas we will be focusing on this year include:

Re-launching our website – with an integrated members area, more online resources including case studies and interactive news pages.

Ensuring that our community partners continue to receive the skilled support they require by increasing the accessible volunteering opportunities, such as virtual volunteering roles, we have available. 

We will also be looking to raise awareness of the lesser known City-fringe boroughs such as Lambeth to ensure those community organisations receive the support they need.

Finally, we will be consulting you! We are looking forward to discussing our plans and finding out how we can best support your organisation in the coming year.