Gap Action Partnership

The Gap Action Partnership (G.A.P.) was established in September 2005 with the aim of getting local people involved in decision making processes at The Gap and putting those decisions into action.

We aim to make the local community better by:

• liaising with local community police officers, social workers, council representatives, small businesses and national companies to resolve local problems and issues;
• initiating community projects;
• encouraging awareness and use of the Gap by local people.

The Gap Action Partnership is run by a group of local volunteers. They are an eclectic bunch from a wide range of backgrounds, spanning a wide age range from teenagers to senior citizens. As they all live locally, they have a firm knowledge of the area, the issues at stake and a vested interest in achieving positive outcomes. G.A.P. has been an empowering experience, using people's existing skills, developing new ones and increasing their general confidence.

Meet every Friday afternoon at The Gap. Every last Friday of the month we hold an open surgery session where we welcome members of the community to come in and share ideas and problems with the group.

The project has been enabled / facilitated by Maria Franchi of Mosaic Consultancy and Andrew Baugh. At the end of the project, local volunteers will have gained an ONC in Community Development.

The G.A.P. feel it is important to listen to the local community and find out what they actually want and need. > link to consultation page. There will be an open day where results of this consultancy process will be presented, along with a film of the ground covered in this process. There will also be an art competition encouraging people to state what they think of the local area and how they would like to see it develop.

We have already had a success story where we approached Stagecoach about the problems of accessibility on one of the local bus routes > read more about it here.

We are happy to help other centres initiate this project in order to realise similar aims.

funding / donors.