Tag Archives: community engagement

A Community Conversation – come and join!

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3rd May – hold the date! The £eith Chooses team invites you to a Leith community ‘away day’ event (free lunch and refreshments).
This one day event will be a chance to network with other local charities and community groups, and to talk about common goals or potential collaborations for £eithChooses or other grant opportunities. Organisations that have applied to £eith Chooses in the past, or that may consider a future application, are invited, as are groups/individuals interested in integrating into, volunteering and supporting the Leith community.

When: Wednesday, May 3 (10am-4pm)
Where: Norton Park Conference Centre

This is not a drop-in day. Please follow the link below to register for the event:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/engaging-eithchooses-a-community-conversation-tickets-592662047137

We hope to have a relaxed and sociable ‘get together’ that may in some part help to replace the much-missed £eithChooses Voting day event, cancelled in recent years due to Covid.

It will also be an opportunity for the £eithChooses steering group and Edinburgh Council to hear from you about whether/how £eithChooses is working for you. We’d love to get feedback on this year’s vote. Your experience and knowledge of the needs of Leith can also feed into next year’s voting themes.

The day is supported by funding from

 

Voting is open now!

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£eith Chooses voting is OPEN NOW! Please vote, and please pass the word around!

How do I vote?

Easiest for many people is to vote online at www.edinburgh.gov.uk/voteleithchooses

Otherwise, pick up a paper voting paper at  any of the places listed below. (You can collect a voting form for someone else, but please do not photocopy forms, as each is invidually marked.) You can fill it in and deposit your vote on the spot there, or take a postage paid envelope and post it later.

McDonald Road Library
2-8 McDonald Road
Edinburgh
EH7 4LU		 Leith Library
28-30 Ferry Road
Edinburgh
EH6 4AE
Utilita
41 Newkirkgate
Edinburgh
EH6 6AA		 Out of the Blue Drill Hall
36 Dalmeny Street
Edinburgh
EH6 8RG
The Wee Hub (The Living Memory Association)
1st floor (former Debenhams)
Ocean Terminal shopping centre
74 Ocean Drive
EH6 6JJ

 

Six more sleeps…and we’re going postal!

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£eith Chooses voting opens next week, on Monday 16th January, and will run for 2 weeks. Have you checked out the projects yet, so you know who you will be voting for?
Have a look here

Great news! Although most people will vote online as usual, we have also reintroduced postal voting for folk who cannot easily access the internet. You can pick up a voting form at any of the places listed below. Please pass the word around!

You can collect a voting form for someone else, but please do not photocopy forms, as each is invidually marked.

McDonald Road Library
2-8 McDonald Road
Edinburgh
EH7 4LU		 Leith Library
28-30 Ferry Road
Edinburgh
EH6 4AE
Utilita
41 Newkirkgate
Edinburgh
EH6 6AA		 Out of the Blue Drill Hall
36 Dalmeny Street
Edinburgh
EH6 8RG
The Wee Hub (The Living Memory Association)
1st floor (former Debenhams)
Ocean Terminal shopping centre
74 Ocean Drive
EH6 6JJ

 

 

 

Now is the time to apply to £eith Chooses

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You are encouraged to apply to £eith Chooses for a grant of up to £5,000 for your community project (to run from April 2023 to March 2024).
If you want advice on your idea  / application, please come along to talk to us at  McDonald Road Library (Learning Centre, upstairs),  4 – 5pm, Wednesdays the 14th, 21st, and 28th September.

Your project doesn’t need to be complicated. It just needs to be something that can be delivered within 12 months, that will help/support/protect vulnerable folk in Leith.

You need to be a constituted group with a bank account, or your smaller group could partner with such a group.

The people of Leith will vote in January 2023 on all the proposed projects, and the projects that gain the most votes will be awarded the funding.

Download your application form here  http://www.leithchooses.net/applications-needed-asap .

 

£eith Chooses Steering Group, anyone?

Aside

We would like to invite new people to join the £eith Chooses Steering Group, whether for a longer or a shorter period, to bring new ideas and new energies to the process and to try to ensure that different aspects of the local community are as well represented as possible. Could this be you?

The Steering Group runs the annual £eith Chooses event, which facilitates the distribution of community grant funding locally, via a voting process that tries to involve as many Leith community members as possible in learning about local charities and community groups and their work, and voting for their favourite causes. Local democracy in action!

The Steering Group is chaired by elected Leith Walk Councillor Susan Rae and is made up of volunteers from local Community Councils, and from the community in general, and a member of Council staff. There has been a small but solid ‘core’ of experienced members for a few years, and a number of others who have come for a shorter time and given invaluable help, but have not stayed long term. You would be eligible to join if you are – just like for the voting – someone who lives, works, volunteers, or studies in Leith. We are looking for ‘working members’  – that is, people who have time to attend meetings fairly regularly and contribute actively (this is not just a token title for your CV).  If  you work for a group that might be applying to £eith Chooses for funds, you can still be part of the Steering Group (but might have to to step out of certain processes, briefly, where there could be a conflict of interest). You could ask to attend a couple of meetings as an ‘observer’ if you’d like to learn more about how it all operates.

Please get in touch if you are interested. Email: secretary@leithlinkscc.org.uk

 

Gentle Reminder – please complete our wee survey?

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Please remember to fill in the short feedback survey about the recent £eith Chooses event, and to flag up any any ideas for next year’s theme and event. The survey is open until 13th April. https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/lthch2022

We do listen very carefully!

Gallery of Projects available to view

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UPDATE

Online voting will open on Monday 24 January, until 31 January. You can vote from any smart phone or computer, we will post the link here as soon as it’s live.

Thanks to a very generous last minute offer from Utilita – anyone who can’t vote online can go into the Utilita Energy Hub shop in the New Kirkgate any day next week and get help to vote there. Staff and a member of the £eith Chooses Steering Group will be on hand to support voters. 

The 20 projects that are applying to £eith Chooses 2021 – 2022 for funding are now all available (listed in alphabetical order) for public viewing. Please read the project summaries here and start thinking about which three (four, if you use your Boost Vote, which we hope you will) you’d like to vote for, when voting opens on 24rth January.

£eith Chooses: voting coming soon!

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”So what’s happening with £eith Chooses?” you may be asking. Well, 20 interesting and worthwhile community projects have been put forward, and the Leith Chooses Christmas elves have been busily working away in the background to get all the information up on the website for you to look through and think about, before you vote. This will go live for your delectation on Monday 10th January, so please come back here and check in then! Online voting will then open on Monday 24 January.

£eith Chooses welcomes support from POLHA

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Port of Leith Housing Association (POLHA) is offering great support to the community in Leith via the mechanism of the £eith Chooses process (amongst other work that POLHA does, of course),

POLHA has contributed £5,000 to the ‘pot’ of money available through £eith Chooses, to projects that benefit Leith. They have also designed and published a useful little information ‘pack’ that aims to help you use social media to get votes for your project., once you’ve applied.

POLHA CEO Heather Kitely has made a wee video to encourage application to £eith Chooses. https://fb.watch/8VdipMn_as/

Please feel free to download the social media info pack here, to use and / or pass on to colleagues.