Forth Valley Third Sector Conference: The Highlights!

The second Forth Valley Third Sector Conference on Wednesday 13^th February surpassed all our expectations to be one of the most exciting, engaging events in recent years.

Hosted in partnership with our colleagues at Clackmannanshire TSI (CTSI) and Stirlingshire Voluntary Enterprise, (SVE), the halls of our fantastic venue Alva Academy were filled with laughing and chatter as attendees from across Forth Valley’s third sector spoke with stallholders of various support organisations and partners, and had the chance to hear from a range of facilitators on a number of topics all centred around our theme of “Growing Your Communities”, helping our local sector be as strong and resilient as it possibly can be.

There were also keynote speeches from Anna Fowlie, new CEO of the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO), who talked about the importance of the third sector at all different levels across Scotland, and Karyn McCluskey, CEO of Community Justice Scotland, who presented on the role community justice plays, and how the third sector supports this.

(Caption:  Anna Fowlie, Jen Kerr, Natalie Masterson and Anthea Coulter before Anna’s keynote speech at Forth Valley Third Sector Conference 2019.)

Karyn then joined our afternoon panel, “The Future of Community Empowerment”, which discussed topics from across the board, not least the importance of engaging young people.

(Caption:  Our CEOs and afternoon panel members after their discussion.)

During the afternoon showcase, attendees heard from members of Alva Development Trust, who have been through the asset transfer process and rejuvenated a vital resource in Alva – a living example of the day’s theme in action.

(Caption:  Members of Alva Development Trust speaking during the conference’s afternoon showcase.)

Workshops revolved around an immense variety of subjects, with presentations including:

• Community Empowerment:  Making Neighbourhoods Stronger
• The Community Justice Act:  What Can Third Sector Organisations Do To Support This?
• Tackling Inequalities:  Everyone Has A Role To Play!
• Scotland’s Public Health Priorities
• Creating Cultures for Co-Production
• The Scottish Governance Code for the Third Sector
  • Governance Code Quiz
• Gift Aid and the Gift Aid Small Donation Scheme
• How to Recruit and Retain Volunteers
• The Importance of Young Trusteeship in Scotland
• GDPR:  Where Are We Now?

Videos of all speeches, the panel and showcase will be available soon on the CVS Falkirk, CTSI and SVE websites, with transcriptions.

Anthea Coulter, Chief Officer at our hosts CTSI, said, “We have had some wonderful feedback already that the workshops and the speakers were really inspiring this year, and people left feeling both motivated to “hustle”, as Karyn McCluskey described it.  But they also reported feeling more confident going forward through the advice, information and networking they got from stallholders, facilitators and chatting with other groups. It was a great success!”

On behalf of our partners, we at CVS Falkirk would like to thank everyone who was there on the day, all our fantastic stallholders and facilitators, our inspiring speakers, our teams, and most importantly, every single attendee who came to Alva Academy. We hope you all enjoyed it as much as we did, and we look forward to seeing you all again next time, when SVE host in Stirling!