Common Good First consortium meets at GCU

Common Good First consortium meets at GCU

July 7, 2017

Following their kick-off meeting in South Africa in January 2017, the EU-funded Common Good First project team met again at Glasgow Caledonian University in Glasgow in the last week of June 2017.

The twenty-four partners travelled from South Africa, Denmark, England, Iceland, Norway and Spain and they were joined by Paivi Hernesniemi, the project’s EU Officer from Brussels and Brent Brodie from the Scottish Government’s Department of Social Enterprise, Social Innovation and Social Investment, who are also contributing funding to the initiative.  The workshop was introduced by GCU’s Principal and Vice Chancellor, Professor Pamela Gillies, who has supported the project from its inception and initial proof of concept phase.

“It’s really important that we all come together because we are a group from different fields, we really need to find ourselves and be sure of the mission we are driving in the project” – Di Hornby

The aim of the three-day session was for the team to make progress on planning the digital storytelling modules, which are to be piloted at South Africa’s Rhodes University and University of South East Norway; to develop the approach for project selection across South Africa; and to consider the logistics of the platform build, which will take place in Cape Town early next year.

The outputs from the digital storytelling workshop at the University of South East Norway were shared with the group, as were examples of digital stories from students at Rhodes University.  The consortium also discussed  project selection in South Africa for Common Good First and the concept of the asset-based approach to sustainable community development through a Ted talk from Cormac Russell.

“The meeting in Glasgow has been very helpful in defining the project, defining deliverables, defining also what we are supposed to look for” – Nils-Petter Karlsson

The group was also introduced to one of Scotland’s newest social enterprises, Soul Food Sisters, who provided lunch on the second day of the workshop.

At the end of meeting, a number of partners explored the countryside beyond Glasgow in a bus tour of Loch Lomond and Inverary.

 

Event Documents

 

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