It’s
been a while since we’ve blogged, so there are a couple of things to catch up on.
Firstly,
our Lottery funded bereavement project is now underway. We have recruited Jo Reeve to run the three
year project. Jo is currently busy
planning the recording and monitoring processes. The Big Lottery Fund people
are very stringent on how we report progress of the work and those taking part
in it, so it is vital that this is planned meticulously. If we don’t give them
the right information in our bi-annual reports, they will stop paying us! But
Jo has also found time to make contact with people who are interested in being part
of the project, and has already proved that she has a wonderful capacity to
listen and guide. Keep watching Facebook
and Twitter for news of events. We will
be talking to people directly about the direction that the project will take at
our conference in November – ahead of a major launch early in 2016.
For
some time now, we have wanted to do something to raise awareness of the issue
of asbestos in schools. Our Asbestos in
the Home project was so well received, we wondered if we could use this as a
template for a school building project. Joanne researched the possibilities and
found that we could do something similar.
This interactive tour would take you through two different types of
school building – the system built school of the mid 20th century;
and the Victorian school with 20th century alterations. The tour could be saved onto usb stick and
sent out to headteachers. Sarah
prepared a written funding proposal, and sent this out to the trade unions that
represent people who work in schools. She also approached some other funders.
We are still waiting for some responses, and we will also experiment with
CrowdFunding later in the year. However
we can now report that thanks to support from three trade unions, there is
enough in the pot to start work on producing the computer programmes and
accompanying leaflets. The major supporter so far is Unite East Midlands – they
have now made this project happen with their contribution of over £5,000. The teaching union ATL and UCATT have also
donated. When the computer programme is ready, we will be buying in a load of
usb sticks so that anyone will be able to have a look – but we really hope that
we can get this used in every staff room in the East Midlands. As usual, we
will update you when we have news.
