Does no pay make you more powerful? Grassroots Channel Programme 21
I’ve just spent a wonderful morning with two women who are both directors of Witton Lodge Community Association. Linda Hines has been involved for 15 years while Michelle Ashmore got stuck in just two or three years ago.
The Association has been working really closely with Birmingham City Council and other partners to drive through a huge regeneration project for Perry Common in the north of the city. It began with the bombshell that hundreds of homes were so structurally unsound they would have to be demolished.
The association is really central to its success for two reasons. First the 14 unpaid (and mostly resident) directors have a common sense idea of how to help the community thrive. Secondly the council was unable to raise the money for rebuilding on its own. The finance was only possible because of the association. Their hard won expertise is now being shared through the governments Guide Neighbourhoods programme (along with Balsall Heath and Castle Vale)
If you scroll down you can listen to their lively (and sometimes tearful) conversation and find out why both directors are convinced that much of their power derives from them being unpaid. So much so that wouldn’t want it any other way. Oh and please leave any comments here on the blog.
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Erdington Community Network
Birmingham Community Empowerment Network
December 8th, 2006 at 4:41 pm
[...] He cites the Seti project (using pc downtime to search for ET), Wikipedia (the online collaborative encyclopaedia) and Linux, the open source software built by volunteers. He also says that the efforts of millions of amateurs can threaten those of the professionals. Wal Mart’s biggest competitor – he argues – are the legions who sell on eBay. Linux is a threat to Microsoft’s market share: These new non-organisations pose a huge challenge to the established organisational order and the professions and managers who design, control and lead them. They embody a new ethic of collaborative, shared effort, often not motivated by money. Recently I met two women who run the Witton Lodge Community Association in Perry Common. It’s a resident run business which has been driving the communal and physical regeneration of this Birmingham neighbourhood. “Being unpaid makes us powerful”, they told me. Why? [...]
September 11th, 2007 at 11:14 am
[...] The residents have also transformed many of their communal areas. Chris is standing in front of Anderton Gardens, a new garden named after a police sergeant who worked with them. (created with help from Groundwork Birmingham) The pragmatic approach of Chris and others in the Birmingham South West residents group reminds me of so many others we’ve spoken to on the Grassroots Channel, especially the people of Perry Common and Masood Yasin in Washwood Heath. [...]
October 30th, 2007 at 11:02 pm
[...] Sue Beardsmore talks to Mary Harvey and Sheila Barker of the Witton Lodge Community Association. Also of interest will be this pdf briefing on neighbourhood policing plus earlier programmes on the volunteers running their local police station and how demolition in Perry Common planted the power in the hands of the people. [...]
February 1st, 2008 at 4:04 pm
[...] 4. Does no Pay Make you Powerful? Linda Hines and Michelle Ashmore of Witton Lodge Community Association on how people power is transforming Perry Common. [...]
March 28th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
[...] Recently I met two women who run the Witton Lodge Community Association in Perry Common. It’s a resident run business which has been driving the communal and physical regeneration of this Birmingham neighbourhood. “Being unpaid makes us powerful”, they told me. Why? For a number of reasons, but one it the freedom it creates to do what is right, rather than what the paymaster requires. Come off it…business is about money. [...]