Community Development
Supporting Southampton community groups, social enterprises and organisations
- SO: Linked partner organisations Southampton Voluntary Services, Training for Work In Communities Southampton (TWICS) and Social Enterprise Link (SEL) work together to support communities and organisations to develop activities and services. We do this in a number of ways, below are some examples:
- Giving advice about reopening in a covid safe way
- Community engagement – finding out what matters to local residents, and working with you to
- Helping communities to come together to start new activities
- Co-facilitating SO:Links – local forums of residents, volunteers, community activities, local groups and city wide organisations in 6 local areas across Southampton (For more about these and the next gathering in your area see our SO:Links page.)
- Supporting the development of our SOLID (SO:Linked information directory)
- Helping organisations find and access funding
- Supporting groups to involve volunteers, on every aspect of the volunteer journey – from putting together a volunteer policy, to recruiting volunteers, to addressing challenges and reward and recognition.
So if you are a resident, a volunteer, you represent a local community group or a city wide charity we’d love to get to know you. And we invite you to:
- Book on to your local SO:Link gathering (online currently)
- Fill out the referral form below, or get in touch at soccg.solinked@nhs.net to let us know about your project and have a chat with one of our community develop workers
- Sign up for the Southampton Voluntary Services E news www.southamptonvs.org.uk
- Add your service, community group or activity to our community directory (SOLID)
- If you’re looking for volunteers, add your volunteering opportunity to the website so local people can sign up to volunteer with you
- If you need help with any aspect of involving volunteers, please get in touch.
- If you’d like to refer people to our SO:Linked navigators please use the online form. If you’d like your team to learn more about what the navigators do, we’d be happy to give a short briefing, please get in touch to request this and we’ll be happy to meet you.
SO:Linked works with existing voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations of all sizes, as well as with people who are looking to start up community groups, organisations and social businesses.
We can help you with many aspects of your organisation including
- Consultancy
- Training
- IAG
- Recruiting and managing volunteers
- Governance
- Funding
- Linking you with other organisations and networks
- Advice on HR matters
- Policy development
The partner organisations within SO:Linked that support with Community Development are:
Southampton Voluntary Services
We are the umbrella body for local voluntary and community groups working in Southampton. We provide a wide range of services including specialist support, advice and training to our membership. We also provide and promote information to individuals and organisations on volunteering in the city.
Social Enterprise Link
Creating and providing opportunities for social, cooperative, community and trading charity enterprises. We will provide you or signpost you to our expert members if you start, develop, market, commission your social enterprise, find educational opportunities or for anything social and cooperative enterprise in Wessex
TWICS
TWICS provides affordable and accessible training to enable people to overcome their barriers to learning and develop ‘community work’ skills with the opportunity to have their training accredited and gain qualifications. This allows people to not just to get engaged in their local community but to also get paid employment.
