Council of Ethnic Minority Voluntary Sector Organisations

Strengthening communities

This is a unique series of programmes aimed at Britain’s minority ethnic communities and their voluntary organisations. The purpose of capacity building is to strengthen the community and its organisations, to give them a voice and involve them in the whole community.

Minority ethnic voluntary organisations develop as a response to need. Many of them are small with limited resources and few full-time staff. Our programmes aim at developing the leadership of communities by providing an infrastructure. CEMVO staff work closely with the organisation through its inauguration and development until it is sustaining itself. We have worked with over 1,000 groups in this way.

 

Working with local people

Our staff conduct initial meetings with the groups. From this an action plan is developed and participants are encouraged with peer learning, benchmarking and networking to spread good practice.

Our approach, which is needs driven, is evolving constantly and is based on working with our client organisation, rather than for them.

 

You can help by:

• engaging in our network activity.
• identifying where capacity building could be of benefit to a community.