Trust Meets With DSD Minister
Representatives of the Building Change Trust met with newly appointed Department of Social Development Minister Lord Morrow at Stormont on Tuesday 19th January 2016.
Meeting the minister were Trust Chairperson Bill Osborne, Board Members John Peto and Margaret Henry, Director of Operations Nigel McKinney and Programme Leader Paul Braithwaite.
On the agenda were a wide range of topics, focussing on the Trust’s work in the areas of Social Finance, Social Innovation and Inspiring Impact. As well as this, Bill Osborne also brought key findings and recommendations of the just published evaluation of the Trust’s CollaborationNI initiative to the Minister’s attention
Nigel McKinney said: “The Trust are grateful to the minister for giving us his time, especially as has only just been appointed to the position.
“We had an in depth discussion about our work in Social Finance, including highlighting our great work in Community Shares and our ongoing research into how social investment can be used in the arts and environment sectors.
“Inspiring Impact was also on the agenda and we discussed our successes in helping to integrate better impact practice into the Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise sector – and how we felt this will help organisations better show the impact they’re making in their communities”.
Paul Braithwaite, who heads up the Trust’s work in Social Innovation said: “It was a pleasure to meet the Minister and to get to discuss our work in social innovation with him.
“We’re at the early stages of developing Social Innovation NI, which we hope will be a one stop shop for social innovation in Northern Ireland. An ambitious initiative such as this takes input from all sectors to be successful so getting it on the radar of government at this early stage is really encouraging”.
Bill Osborne said: “The Trust is closing its doors in just under 3 years and we want to ensure our work has legacy and will carry on beyond 2018.
“Embedding what we believe is good practice across social finance, social innovation and impact practice at government level is key to ensuring this legacy. The same goes for our work in collaboration and Creative Space for Civic Thinking”.