A Night At The SAFTAs

We had a great night at the SAFTAs last week, with Karen Pickering and our volunteers from Keeping Saffron in Mind.  The awards ceremony was held at the Samworth Enterprise Academy, which is an impressive new school located in the Saffron area.  It appeared to be a respected and well-liked landmark in this community, which is crucial for us to explore.

The SAFTAs celebrated local volunteers that were really making a difference, and also included a detailed participatory budget (PB) excercise.  I'd learnt about PB in a recent empowerment training course - but it was exciting to see it in action.  It's a wonderful example of communities taking ownership of funds and resources. (If you would like more info on how this worked, feel free to contact me).

Young people from the area were invited to perform dance and drama as part of the event, which gave the night a fun and uplifting feeling.  

Alison Kirk and I had the opportunity to present our work in Saffron, this was great as there were around 300 residents in the audience.  We encouraged more people to get involved.  It will be interesting to see how many people join the project, as a result of the SAFTAs and to develop some of the valuable partnerships that we made on the night.

It's worth sharing the comments of one of our Keeping Saffron in Mind volunteers, on the night; This person is severely affected by anxiety in his life and to our amazement stood up on the stage and addressed a  huge crowd of strangers, to tell them about the impact that volunteers in Saffron have had. When I congratulated him on the speech, he told me that watching the video clip of Ryan at our last meeting, had inspired him to stand up and speak out.  WOW!