Making Local Food Work
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What is Making Local Food Work?
Recent work by Co‑operativesUK on behalf of the Home Office (Governance & Participation- Enhancing Democratic Participation in Communities, Active Communities Unit, April 2002 - March 2005) demonstrated a lack of knowledge within the social economy on what makes for good governance and how it might be achieved. There is also awareness that good governance matters and is crucial to the health and sustainability of organisations, particularly those trading as social enterprises. The Governance Hub, set up as a result of ChangeUp and accountable to Capacity Builders, has as one of its objectives to increase the governance capacity of organisations to deliver their missions, and has just commissioned research into governance needs of social enterprises.
As a result of the lack of specialist skills and knowledge about governance many organisations find themselves unable to access appropriate advice, resulting in them operating under unsuitable structures and procedures that can have a negative effect on their future sustainability.
The Making Local Food Work project - a collaboration between many organisations working in the Food and social Enterprise sector, aims to connect People and Land through Community Enterprise.
Co‑operativesUK is responsible for the Good Food, Good Governance part of the project, which aims to ensure that intermediaries (those providing support to third sector food enterprises on the ground) and the enterprises themselves have the skills to deal with the good governance of their organisation. It will improve their knowledge of good governance, its impact on the sustainability of organisations, the skills of 100 intermediaries and ensure that appropriate and robust governance and structures are in place and maintained among target organisations.
The Good Food, Good Governance part of the project will:
- develop and rollout of a training programme for intermediaries to increase knowledge and develop a uniform approach to advising groups.
- establish a network of intermediaries trained to advise and support
- develop 'Good Food, Good Governance' webpages and a web-based 'space' for intermediaries and community organisations to share experiences and best practice.
- develop tools and reference materials to improve access to information on governance arrangements: including advice/ guidance sheets and case studies; an online legal manual for development workers providing advice on legal forms, organisational types, ownership arrangements and charitable status; an interactive exercise to help groups to select the most appropriate governance arrangement.
- run a telephone help-line to request information and assistance on specific issues.
More information can be found at the Making Local Food Work web site