We launched this blog to continue our mission to bridge the gap between City Hall and London’s communities in a year where our work shifted from face-to-face to online engagement.
This year Londoners, their communities and the voluntary and community sector have come together in unprecedented ways to meet growing needs in the capital. The GLA Community Engagement team has worked closely with community groups across London to inform the responses of the GLA and partners to COVID-19 and to start planning towards London’s recovery. We’ve provided funding, information and access to advice and support. Some of the work we delivered this year includes:
- Gathering community insight through telephone calls and the London Community Response Survey – Over 300 voluntary and community organisations providing weekly information on the impact of COVID-19 on their users.
- Meeting regularly with community groups including Gypsy, Roma, Traveller groups; Black majority church leaders; interfaith groups; voluntary sector leaders and many more.
- Strengthening ties with community leaders through our Civic Futures programmes in partnership with Koreo, Dark Matter Labs and The Young Foundation and our Citizen-Led Engagement programme.
- Partnering with funders to offer emergency support through the London Community Response Fund.
- Hosting digital roundtables with Deputy Mayor Debbie Weekes-Bernard with specific communities affected by the pandemic, including more than 130 community and Faith organisations. From these conversations we collated an issues map, synthesising the top concerns groups had during the initial response to the pandemic. You can view the issues map here.
- Community conversations on London’s Recovery - 70 conversations across London, led by 60 frontline community organisations, covering Black, South Asian, East and South East Asian, older people, young people, Disabled-led and many other community groups from a broad spectrum of backgrounds.
How to stay involved
London’s recovery
As part of London’s recovery, engagement has been identified as a vital part of the mission based approach, as part of this there are a number of ways you can get involved:
Talk London – City Hall’s online community where you can have your say on London’s big issues including recovery.
Community Led Recovery – following on from the Community Conversations we conducted in the Summer for communities to lead the conversation on London’s recovery, in the New Year we will be launching a Community Led Recovery programme to enable communities most deeply affected by COVID-19 to share their lived experiences with decision makers as they develop policies and programmes for recovery.
Grant funding
You will find here a list of open grants to support communities and civil society organisations across a number of GLA teams. This includes the Civil Society Roots Incubator programme, which aims to develop collaborations and/or partnerships led by and for groups who have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19 and the structural drivers of this disproportionate impact.
Public Health Briefings
We continue to host monthly online public health briefings for Community Voluntary and Faith groups. You can join to hear from partners across London including Public Health England on key information about the situation in London and how you can continue to keep your communities safe.
The next session will take place on Tuesday 12th January 17:00 – 18:00 and you can sign up here.
We hope you continue to stay safe and well during the festive period and into the New Year. You can continue to visit the COVID-19 hub for information on regulations and guidance in London.
As always, you can continue to keep in touch with us at [email protected].