One of the crucial aspects of the project is really making sure local people are at the centre of the work and get an opportunity to shape and direct the next phase of the project.
That’s why, on Tuesday this week, we met with some of the participants from the first asset project. We wanted to get their views about what worked well, and what didn’t work so well from the first project. It was lovely to see people again!
After a brief catch up about what had happened since we last met, Jenni, the project evaluator, got us down to work.
Jenni asked us questions both about community asset mapping (finding out about what is useful for well-being within the community, and personal asset mapping (thinking about your own personal assets).
The questions included:
- Have you done anything like the asset mapping workshop before?
- What worked well about the workshop/ what worked less well?
- What would encourage you to come to future workshops?
- Who else do you think should get involved (types/ groups of people) What do you think would encourage them to come?
- What do you think about the map that has been created?
- What ways did you use your personal asset map and what difference did that make to you?
There was a range of views from participants, comments included:
- I think we should broaden out the types of people who come along to workshops, so that we can get the views of more people
- I think people can learn a lot about themselves by mapping their own assets – it makes you think a bit differently
- its good for people to share what they know about the community
- people’s experiences are so important
- being involved can help individual well-being – but also that of others – giving them a feeling of beingย part of the future of their community
Jenni will be writing up a fuller record of the meeting and we’ll be using the comments to help shape the indicators for the project evaluation – so it was really valuable to have people come along.
We asked the participants whether or not they would like to continue to be involved in the project in its next phase and were really pleased that they said yes! We’ll be following up with these individuals over the next few weeks.
Thanks to Ceartas Advocacy for allowing us to use their rooms – they served as a lovely neutral place for us to work. We’ll be back to visit again soon!