Cities of Service Mentor from the USA visits Plymouth

Plymouth, one of an elite few cities awarded Cities of Service status, has received a visit from an American mentor to help kickstart the scheme.

Marcia Hope Goodwin, who is Chief Service Officer for the City of Orlando in Florida, visited Plymouth on Wednesday 8th October and Thursday 9th October to provide advice and find out about the Plymouth’s plans for Cities of Service.

Plymouth is one of only seven local authorities in the UK to be awarded grant funding to recruit and support volunteers in the local community to address key citywide issues. Marcia is the official Mentor for Plymouth, so will provide advice, support and guidance to Plymouth’s Chief Cities of Service Officer Darin Halifax throughout the 18 month scheme.

Marcia said: “I think Plymouth is off to a great start with Cities of Service. There is real leadership and backing from the top with support from both elected members and senior managers at Plymouth City Council to drive this forward. In Orlando we have had fantastic support from Mayor Buddy Dyer, our city council and our residents.This has been key to the success of our initiatives.

“I am also impressed by the local networks that have already been set up. It is great to see that citizens of Plymouth are designing the projects and investing their time.

“I also think it is a good idea for Plymouth to focus on the two projects – Grow, Share Cook, and Energy Champions – so they can really make them work. In Orlando we did six projects and in retrospect I can see that starting off with two projects would be an advantage.
“It is also important to make sure the strategy is responsive and adaptable – if something is not working, you can always change it as you go through the process and try a different approach.

“I wish Plymouth every success with Cities of Service and I look forward to strengthening our partnership on this.”
Councillor Chris Penberthy, Cabinet Member for Cooperatives, Housing and Community Safety at Plymouth City Council, said: “We were delighted to welcome Marcia to Plymouth and it will be fantastic to have her on board for advice and support as she has very valuable experience we can learn from.

“We are absolutely thrilled that Plymouth has been awarded Cities of Service Status and look forward to delivering this exciting project with the help of local volunteers.

“As a cooperative council, we believe Cities of Service is a great vehicle to help us achieve our aim to create a fairer city where everyone does their bit, in this case through volunteering.”

‘Our Plymouth’, the name for the Cities of Service project in Plymouth, is being launched on 21st October. The two projects being focused on are ‘heating’ and ‘eating, as identified in the Fairness Commission report.

Darin Halifax, Cities of Service Chief Service Officer said “I was great to host Marcia and I hope she enjoyed being in Plymouth as much as we enjoyed her being here. I look forward to working with her and key delivery partners to make Cities of Service a success.”

Heating – With nearly 14,000 households in fuel poverty, our Energy Champions aims to address this by recruiting and training volunteer energy champions in targeted neighbourhoods to:

• Help people save money by identifying the best supplier for them and helping them switch
• Help people to save money by implementing energy saving measures.

Eating - Plymouth Foodbank has seen over 8,000 users in 2013/14 and our soup runs provided over 23,000 meals in the same period with more young people and women now using them than ever before. Our Grow, Share, Cook project will address the increase in food poverty in our city by:

• Increasing the number of volunteers engaged in growing fresh fruit and vegetables,
• Sharing it and assisting people with cooking it
• Increasing the quantity of food grown and distributed locally
• Improving the distribution of food to people who most need it
• Developing and delivering food awareness and cooking sessions.

Anyone who wants to get involved with Cities of Service in Plymouth can contact Darin Halifax on 01752 205446 or email darin.halifax@plymouth.org.uk