MEMBERS NEWSLETTER SEPTEMBER 2007
Since our last newsletter there have been some changes on our board of Directors. Minnie Mouatt is now the Chairperson, with Gordon Thomson as the Vice Chair. Unfortunately Laura Baisley has stepped down and has gone on to be one of the North Isles Councillors, she still gives us her full support. We have also lost John Coutts who has now moved away, but welcome from Fetla,r Roger Brimacombe and Paul Gill. We still are lucky enough to retain Cheryl Jamieson from Unst and Robert Jamieson and Lesley Gray from Yell. We do have at present a vacancy for a Director from Yell.
Office base at Sellafirth
On August 1st we moved into new premises at Unit 2 Sellafirth. This will now be the base for Initiative at the Edge North Isles ltd. We will also be offering a “Hot Desk” facility for remote working and job dispersal. We have already got 2 SIC Employees that will be starting to hot desk from October 1st, and Shetland College are holding one of their courses in our meeting room. A list of facilities and charges are available from the office, please ring 01957 744394.
We hope to have a “Launch Day” in the near future to promote the new base and to inform the Communities of the progress of the Development plan.
North Isles Trails Project
Initiative at the Edge is pleased to welcome John Laughland, the new Trails Development worker, to the team. John started in post in August and is making great progress with the project so far. His remit is to research and devise a series of visitor trails for the North Isles and to promote and market these trails, including the creation of appropriate publicity material.
John has started to have a series of meetings with people who are partners in the project, and local people are also giving John some ideas for the Trails. Alongside this he will be putting together a Tourism audit report of the North Isles to help indicate where there will be gaps that need to be filled to ensure we offer the best tourism facilities we can in the North Isles. John can be contacted at the office or e-mail him at john.iateni@yahoo.co.uk
Youth Employment Project
Initiative at the Edge has managed through ROA funding to hold a series of courses for the Youth of the North Isles to:-
· Gain experience and skills
· Enhance knowledge and understanding of employability skills.
· Produce positive attitudes towards the world of work and business.
· Develop social and core skills and build confidence.
· Provide training on relevant topics relating to work, business and entrepreneurship.
These are being organised in partnership with the North Isles Youth Development worker. Some of the courses on offer are:-
- Momentum driving
- First Aid
- Music workshop
- Babysitting
- Outdoor activities
- Film making and editing
- YUF Drama
- And many more.
Motivation for Local Entreprise
This has been a project between Highlands, Shetland and Norway, each looking at different themes, ours being enterprise. A group of entrepreneurs, the North Isles youth worker and an enterprise teacher travelled to Norway to look at how they address entrepreneurship. A return visit to Shetland by Norwegians and a Highlander was very successful, with one of the Norwegians going back to add to her business chocolate making. Good connections are still established with the group. The Youth worker and the enterprise teacher have just come back from a return visit to set up a youth exchange between Baltasound School and the North Isles youth groups with a school in Norway.
Locally the group have decided to continue to support each other. We are offering a course for them in November on e-selling, this will be with Roy Longmuir and is being held at Baltasound School. We are also going to be looking into a short course on setting up a website. We will endeavour to support the group with training and advice.
Full reports from the visits are available at the office.
Local Food Production
Excellent, impressive, and truly inspiring are some of the comments from our group when we recently visited the Highlands of Scotland to see how they get local food produce to work. In early July four of us from the North Isles of Shetland set off to Inverness for a two day whirlwind visit of a diverse range of sites in the Highlands. On the first day we visited The Natural Veg. Co. in Torbrek, the REAL project at Inverness Academy, and Earthshare. The second day we went along to meet the owners of Glachbeg Croft, and then on to Poolewe Farmers market where we came away with lots of locally produced goodies. Then on to the Good for Ewe project which was what we had been looking forward to as this was the kind of project that would be beneficial to our Island communities, especially the polytunnel that has been split up into individual allotments. From there we went to meet a very inspirational man called Simon Calder who is an active member of the Lochbroom and Ullapool growers group. A full report of the visit is available from the office or on our website www.shetlandcommunities.org/IATE .
Development Group Day
Saturday September 15th brought together some of the Development groups of the North Isles along to a workshop entitled “taking forward Community Development and social enterprise in the North Isles”. The energy, enthusiasm, skills and voluntary contribution of these development groups and emerging social enterprises add value to the North Isles and could have a more significant role to play in local economic development. The best way to do this should was explored on the day. The facilitator was Lorne MacLeod who is a self employed Chartered Accountant specialising in working with community businesses, social enterprise and charities. He has many other interests and is involved in various community projects including the Community owned island of Gigha. From the day to we hope to have identified a clear plan of action for the role of development groups in the North Isles and, if appropriate, assist individual groups to identify priorities and actions.
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