1. What is your job title and what does your work involve?

I am the CEO of Woking YMCA.  What does this involve? Wow, basically I am responsible for the leadership and all operational running of Woking YMCA.  This entails everything from running the operation, overseeing staff, or single program operations, overseeing fundraising, finance, HR, you name it and you will see that I am responsible for it.  I am responsible to the Board of Trustees who are an incredible bunch of business and community leaders who are responsible for the governance and policy setting of Woking YMCA.

2. How long has the Ypod been open now and what kind of work/activities go on there?

We have been open now just over a year and all sorts of activities go on here, everything from a generic drop in service for young people, a counselling service, a single parent mums group, and entry to employment group, dance classes, creative arts classes including a recording studio, gig nights, and just last night we had one of the world's most famous DJs Mark Hill ex artful dodger and of Craig David and Corrine Bailey Ray fame.  Mark did an excellent question-and-answer session on the success, his Road to success, songwriting and music production.

3. How does your work and the work that goes on in the YPod contribute to community engagement?

That’s a great question.  Everything we do is based around community engagement, the YMCA exists, lives and breathes in order to engage with the community and member for Build the community. How do you build a great community? You build great people, you build great leaders, you build great vision and you build great responsibility.

Our work also contributes to community engagement by engaging with established community groups and helping to inspire and motivate and build great community productivity in them also, by inspiring them and supporting them but also by building great partnership and strategic alliances with them.

4. Why is community engagement important to you?

Again, community engagement is the most important to me, everything we do is by engaging with the community.  In order to build and support the community we are to serve the community and everybody responds to being served in a friendly way.  If we can engage success with communities, we build a great future for our time, our children, our grandchildren, together we can make a great difference.  And with this attitude and mindset of spirit, we raise great community leaders, successful entrepreneurs, successful business people, parents, families and young people.

5. What kind of results do you see as a result of your community engagement work? (e.g. have you seen a young person's life positively turn around as a result of your work and could you give an example?)

Yes, we see young peoples lives turned around all the time, we have a culture of turning peoples lives around.  In fact it's very difficult to come into the culture of Woking YMCA and remain the same!  Why?  Because we have a culture of dreaming big dreams and taking small steps.  With this culture we inspire our team and our young people to great things, then the small steps.  It is taking small steps of responsibility to a normal blame shifting no more I can't mentality, but if I do take responsibility I can build a great future for myself and help others around me. In fact I never miss a marketing opportunity.  I have just released a book called Service User Involvement; this is all about community engagement and is published by Jessica Kingsley publishers, you can find it on Amazon or at any local bookstore!  This book was based on a report that we did for the office of the Deputy Prime Minister around the quality assessment framework that exists within is the supporting people funding contracts.  We also then did lots of research on good service user involvement including some pioneering work I did at Southampton YMCA.  I then brought this model to Woking, sort of nicked the wheel and put Woking tires on it. Another good example is we have seen great growth and development in that we have seen clients then come on board as volunteers go through training and mentoring and then become paid members of staff!

6. How do you work with Woking Borough Council - is this an important relationship?

We work with Woking Borough Council all levels.  I work closely with the CEO Ray Morgan and then we work closely with all different departments, such as Sue Barham and Geoff Ward at the youth department level, we were with the sports department,  we were with planning,  we were with community safety strategy and we serve and support Woking Borough Council's strategy.  Again it is very important that we are here to serve.  This is a very important relationship I have worked at this level for 15 years with councils and have never worked within such a strong cohesive relational forward thinking Council as Woking Borough Council.  The way we work together with the churches, at the mosque, the voluntary sector the statutory sector is truly amazing. Supported housing project.  Again we are doing this in partnership with Woking Borough Council and YMCA England.  This is born out of local need and again we are aiming for an exceptional new build where we would just not offer accommodation but supported accommodation with training development and sporting opportunities.  This fits into the YMCA remit of seeing people develop body mind and spirit and helping young people to build a future. We have already had a local church potentially wanting to give us a plot of land, and as long as we meet local need work with the local council there is much money available from the Housing Corporation.

We have been doing a lot of work with Ray Morgan, Ian Draper and the guy from YMCA England, a registered social landlord.
 
7. Do you have any ambitions for the Ypod and more community engagement projects? (eg have you got any exciting plans in the pipeline you could tell us about?)

Yes we have lots of ambitions for Woking YMCA.  Ypod is the first of many, within the whiteboard we have the second floor project which we have done the plans and costings capital plan revenue plan for.  We just need to raise £500,000.  It doesn't sound much if you say it fast!  But seriously we have the promise of two thirds of this funding and we just need to raise the rest.  This would then become self-sufficient as we would run lots of community engagement programmes through it but also could Ron part of his community commercial enterprise and become more self-sufficient rather than running up on fund raising donations grants business support etc.

8. How can people find out more about the Ypod? (eg website details and anything else you would like to plug!)

Yes people can find more about us by coming to see us, please give us a call or an e-mail we would love to show you round.  You can also find more about us on our website, and if you would like to get involved in whatever capacity we welcome it.  The Woking YMCA belongs to Woking and we encourage involvement in community engagement at all levels. 

“Woking YMCA (including the Ypod centre) is a Christian charity and a place of excellence, development and community for all young people regardless of gender, faith, race or background. There are 140 YMCA’s in the UK supporting young people and their families, providing housing, training and community health and fitness.In addition to an extensive programme, Woking YMCA also offers opportunities for volunteering, private donors and corporate sponsorship.”