Monday 30 June 2014

Busy Month......

June has been Volunteer's Month in Gateshead. Our volunteer, John Harlock, braved the weather and took a table full of books to Trinity Square on 7 June for the opening event. Pam Gibson went to the Teams Festival on 14 June -this is our third Teams Festival. On Sunday 29th we had a table at the Bensham and Saltwell festival for the first time. - So far we gave away 288 books at these 3 events.
On 5 July we will be at Dunston and on 19 July at Birtley and also at a Salvation Army event in Gateshead..... so let's see if we can keep up the momentum!

On June 20 - World Refugee Day we held an event at our Team Valley location. In the morning there was a presentation by Hannah from GVOC about the latest regulations regarding refugees, asylum applicans and volunteering. In short, they can all volunteer as restrictions have been lifted. This is excellent news as volunteering offers such a good opportunity for people to join in, meet new people, learn the language better and generally spend what may be a worrying and frustrating time doing enjoyable tasks. Thanks to GVOC for a very interesting presentation with lots of space for questions and explanations.
Lunch was provided by Culture Kitchen - and delicious it was too, with dishes from Angola, Poland and other countries which all blended together to make a wonderful meal.
We are looking forward to working with Culture Connect on other projects in the future.... again, wait and see!

In the afternoon Freedom from Torture gave a talk and showed short films about the fate of some people who suffer torture in different countries around the world. Look at their website for more information.

The mini-bus was provided by Community Transport in Byker - big thanks to Dave who patiently drive back and forth hoping for more passengers. Nexus kindly gave us permission to run the shuttle service from inside the Gateshead Interchange. And finally, thanks to Gateshead Council for funding for this event. It was very much appreciated. 

In the meantime, summer is around here somewhere, the bees are buzzing and so are our minds, hatching new plots and planning new ventures. We hope to be able to announce progress on the multi-lingual library very soon... we are collecting bi-lingual books, particularly for children, as well as flags from all corners of a spherical planet.

And while we're here - with all these summer festivals our supply of children's picture books is running very low, so if you have any children's books your children have finished with, or know of any schools who are clearing out their libraries, please let them know we would be delighted to give them a home.