If you have responsibility for a community building in Gloucestershire, then our Village Halls Week event on Thursday March 20th is specially for you.  There will be information stalls and workshops geared to the needs of people who run halls and community buildings, and a great chance to network and share information and experiences during the free buffet lunch.  

Click the thumbnail of the poster on the left to see the list of exhibitors, and there will be workshops on Recruiting Volunteers, Enhancing Your Online Presence, Covering Your Core Costs, and Trustee Roles and Responsibilities. 

The event will be at the Gambier Parry Hall at Highnam Community Centre, GL2 8DG, and will run from 10am until 2pm.  It's free for anyone with responsibility for a community building in Gloucestershire. To book a place, email us on cdt@grcc.org.uk

We are running a series of free, fun, seated-exercise sessions in Tetbury, funded by the NHS and led by the very popular and entertaining Tetbury-based exercise guru Phil Seal.  If you live with or care for someone with one of the following conditions, you are eligible to participate: respiratory illness, heart failure, poor mobility, poor physical or mental health, long-term health conditions.  

The hour-long sessions are on Tuesdays at 3.15pm, starting on 25th March and running until 22nd April, at Dolphins Hall, New Church St., Tetbury GL8 8DS.  Contact info@grcc.org.uk or 01452 528491 to book a place.

GRCC’s Community Development Team recently ran a free information session on the "Roles & Responsibilities of Trustees and Management Committees" at the Redesdale Hall in Moreton-in-Marsh.  Over twenty trustees, charity volunteers and staff members from across Gloucestershire attended, with one saying "I enjoyed the session, especially the additional discussion you provided around the main points."

Our Community Development Team recommends that all organisations with trustees should provide training on "roles and responsibilities" as part of their trustee induction and development programme.  For support with this, email cdt@grcc.org.uk

As well as providing training, GRCC also organises VCS networking events. These are open to anyone working or volunteering for a voluntary, charitable, or community organisation in Gloucestershire.  Use the button below to sign up. 

Over the past few weeks our VCSE Advice Officer Guy Dobson has been running workshops with some of our VCS Networks on the very topical theme of 'EDI', which stands for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. 

"Rather than perceiving EDI as a challenge to be overcome, organisations should be celebrating these themes within their practice," said Guy.   "It’s crucial for an organisation to reflect both its community of interest and also its locality if it is a place-based organisation." 

"EDI is a wide-reaching and sometimes complicated topic, which has the potential to lead to difficult conversations, but the most important steps are to start a dialogue, listen to one another, and bring your communities with you on your journey of positive change," said Guy.

This brand new guide explains the different types of buildings surveys that anyone managing a village hall or community building might need to understand and commission.  The topics covered include surveys for asbestos, damp, timber decay, structural condition, energy performance (EPC/DPC/PAS) and renewable energy.  

The guide is published to coincide with this year's Village Halls Week (17th - 21st March) by our umbrella organisation ACRE - Action With Communities in Rural England.  

Click the button below to download the detailed 41 page guide as a PDF document.

We’re turning village halls across Gloucestershire into donation points for unused digital devices! This means laptops, tablets, and smartphones can be dropped off, given a second life, and kept in the community.

Just take your old devices to a participating village hall.  We will then wipe all data and refurbish the devices, or responsibly recycle them if they can't be fixed.  Refurbished devices are offered to local people first before being offered further afield. 

To register your village/community hall as a partner, contact digital@grcc.org.uk

Our monthly Moreton Community Hub, which we run as part of our North Cotswolds Connecting Communities Project, will be running on Monday 3rd March. 

The special topic this month will be Falls Prevention.  If you have concerns about falls and trips, or getting up off the floor, or safely moving around, for yourself or a friend or family member, do come along for specialist advice and support.   

Our Social Prescribing Link Workers and a range of staff and volunteers from support organisations will also be there to chat to people and offer advice and help, and there will be the usual socialising and refreshments.

Come along to Jameson Court, GL56 0EW at 10.15am for a short wellbeing stroll, or 10.30am for the drop-in, refreshments and services.  For further information, please contact info@grcc.org.uk or call us on 01452 528491.

Cyber Essentials is an effective, government-backed scheme that will help you to protect your organisation, whatever its size, against a whole range of the most common cyber-attacks.  Having Cyber Essentials accreditation is sometimes a requirement for accessing funding and grants, but can cost small organisations £300 or more to obtain.  

BAE Systems and Lancaster University are running a free, in-person Cyber Essentials training session for Gloucestershire VCSE organisations on Tuesday 8th April, 10am-2.30pm, in Brockworth.   Use the button below to book a place. 

Nominations close this week (Friday 28th February) for all ten categories in the Gloucestershire Volunteer Awards, organised by GoVolunteerGlos which GRCC helps to co-ordinate. 

Use the button below to read the descriptions of the ten categories in the awards, which include Trustee of the Year, Rising Star Award, Community Group Award, and Employer Supported Volunteering Award.  The online nomination form is very short and really does just take two minutes to fill in.  

Don't forget that the GoVolunteerGlos.org website is a fantastic free resource for individuals to find volunteering opportuntities, and for organisations to advertise volunteer roles that need filling.  

If you've had contact with us, or support from us, or just visited our website to try to find information, we'd really love to know how we're doing!  Were we brilliant, just OK, or not very good?  All feedback, good and bad, helps us to shape our services to better fit your needs.