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Community Engagement |
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059 Roger Harington |
click to read > 1. Roger: But what you'd hope is that there ... that people would, would take their area, take the needs of their ... be aware of the needs of their area and look around for the way in which they can respond to them so that they do see themselves as part of a community rather than simply an individual. 2. Now, I think the most overused word in Council life is community, people assume that there are communities. Well, actually, there might be, say, in this area, you might be able to talk about a Pakistani community because there's a lot of people of Pakistani origin who meet together for worship or whatever and, and ditto Bangladeshi, again. But, but otherwise there aren't many places or ways in which different people meet together. 3. Some people go to church, but that's only a minority. Very few people come to community meetings, the, the ones that we ... that the Council set up, and so when people talk about communities, there's lots of little bits of community. And so I, I would hope more people are more interested in trying to ... for there to be events which they join in, whether they be celebration events, or campaigning events or whatever. 4. Mary: So people looking beyond their own ... lives and looking at what other people are doing. 5. Roger: Yes, I mean it'll all. 6. Mary: ...and their connections, yes? 7. Roger: ...all, all this links in with a ... with the wider question of how democracy's going to survive. 8. Mary: Okay. 9. Roger: And, and for all sorts of excellent reasons people don't join in because they think well what's the point? And even people who started off being interested, going to, say, local forums to meet Council Officials, give up because they think well nothing was achieved. 10. Mary: Right. 11. Roger: So ... and ... so it's what can happen, what structures can there be, not for everybody, 'cause not everyone's got time, but so that more people can feel it's worthwhile contributing. At the same time you can't pretend that contributing to these kind of meetings is, is always exciting, you know, it's a grind a lot of the time because there are so many different things, difficult things to sort. 12. Mary: Right, but you'd look for more people to become more involved in what's happening. 13. Roger: Yes, I don't ... again, I mean we've got into a ... this is, this is, this needs a whole sort of seminar really, to though put it as briefly as possible, it's not that you expect everybody out there to come to meetings, and meetings aren't the only things that happen. I mean we have a celebrating Harehills event, you know a sort of fair, but that's an opportunity when there might be people to, to fill a, not ... fill a questionnaire in or express their views about something. 14. Other people will come to meetings, it's just ... I think we just need an imaginative range of opportunities for people to express their views, join in what's going on if they want, so that if there is a big issue you know how to contact and, and give people the opportunity to respond. 15. Mary: Okay, thank you. |
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