The Office for Civil Society has commissioned four of its former strategic partners to report on what the Big Society means for the groups they represent.
Urban Forum, Voice4Change England, the Women’s Resource Centre and Community Matters have been commissioned by the Office for Civil Society to provide advice on how to make the Big Society a reality for their member groups.
All four were given an OCS advisory role in lieu of being retained as a strategic partner.
Voice4Change England and the Women’s Resource Centre have been asked to report to government on “the challenges that inequalities present to the Big Society agenda and how to address them; and the opportunities for tackling inequalities that the Big Society agenda offers”.
Voice4Change England will receive a grant of £80,000 to carry out its work.
Vandna Gohil, director of Voice4Change, said: “Over the next seven months we will be speaking to voluntary and community organisations focused on equality, to find out their experience and views on the Big Society.
“We have planned a series of including an online survey, meetings and events. Visit our websites for the latest information or contact us to find out how you can get involved.”
The OCS has also awarded Urban Forum a grant of £60,000 to gather intelligence from its members – small community groups in deprived areas - about how to make the Big Society and localism a reality in those areas.
Toby Blume (pictured), chief executive of Urban Forum, said his brief would also involve providing more detailed advice on four specific programmes and initiatives agreed with the OCS. These are: neighbourhood planning; community rights, particularly the support that groups need to take up those rights; community organisers, and finally open government and transparency.
“The OCS wants to understand what the attitudes, challenges, opportunities and support needs are amongst the community sector in order to realize some of the ambitions around the Big Society,” Blume said.
The work will be conducted in the current financial year and the organisations will report to the OCS before the end of March.
Last March the OCS cut the number of strategic partners from 42 to 17, of which 12 were in partnerships.
