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Community Outreach at Poplar HARCA
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Michael Keating talks to Poplar HARCA learners
WEA London runs a community outreach course at Poplar HARCA (Housing and Regeneration Community Association) in Tower Hamlets, a registered social landlord with additional interest in regeneration and community engagement.
Participants on the course are learning how local, boroughwide and national services work and how they can get more involved in working within their neighbourhoods and with engaging people who do not currently access local facilities and services.
The group welcomed the chance to meet with Michael Keating the non party political rep from Tower Hamlets council and service head for One Tower Hamlets, when he visited as guest speaker to give a session on “How the council works” in November. One Tower Hamlets is part of the Chief Executive's directorate, providing leadership for how the council addresses equality, cohesion, partnership and the work of the backbench councillors undertaking their overview and scrutiny role, and on this occasion one could say the learners took on something of a scrutiny role in this session!
Michael’s talk outlined the political elected structure of the council and explained how the budget is allocated, a broad overview of the processes on how things are done, what actions can be taken at local level and what is beyond the local authority remit. Michael also spent some time discussing the implications of the Localism Act and how it will influence the way that all councils operate in future.
Questions from the learners ranged from geographical inconsistencies of parking allocation to difficulties with getting registered with a GP, what effect planning provisos have in the current climate of recession with potentially fewer developments going up and how school places are allocated. Mike later emailed answers to several questions which we greatly appreciate as well as his comprehensive and engaging talk to the course.
The Community Outreach course continues until March 2012.
Other WEA run provision with Poplar HARCA has included a wide variety of subjects including: ICT, Literacy, Indian head massage, ESOL, Numeracy, Community Interpreting and Sewing.
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