Archive for March, 2006
Today I attended a party at the Beaumont Estate Community Centre to say goodbye to North Leyton’s Sure Start and to learn more about plans for the new Children’s Centres due to take its place.
Over the past few years, North Leyton Sure Start, based in 803 High Road Leyton, has been an invaluable service for Leyton’s parents and the community as a whole.
One of the sessions run for local mums and dads has been Joanne Lewis’ “Friday Drop-in” at the Beaumont Estate Community Centre. For the past three years, local parents – mostly mums – have come together there, every Friday between 10am and 1pm to relax, chat and receive informative talks from health workers, financial advisors and beauticians.
I went along to speak to one of the Friday drop-ins in February, in my capacity as the Leyton ward Community Champion for Jobs. I wanted to seek the mums’ opinions on how Leyton’s service providers could improve local employment services to better meet their needs.
Graham Cobb and Joanne Lewis (pictured standing in centre) have been North Leyton Sure Start’s unsung heroes. I will be very sad to see them go.
I wish Graham the best of luck in his new job in neighbouring Barking and to Joanne, every happiness and success – you are a truly beautiful and talented person who deserves to go far.
For more information about the future of Sure Start and the new Children’s Centres replacing them please go to www.surestart.gov.uk/
March 31st, 2006
Tonight I attended, and gave a speech at, a brilliant end of term show put on by the kids from the Kreative Culture Klub (KCK).
The Kreative Culture Klub was the brain child of local poet and tireless community activist, Yvonne Bailey. Yvonne works unpaid to support these kids – many of them from deprived backgrounds – to celebrate their talent through song, dance and poetry.
KCK also runs Sunday “discussion sessions” where the children, all aged between 4 and 18, come together to talk about serious issues concerning them. I attended one of the sessions back in January and was astounded by how mature the kids were. Leyton has a bright future indeed if these kids ever become in charge!
Supplementary schools like KCK give deprived children – many of whom come from the Black and Minority Ethnic communities – the opportunity to celebrate their worth as well as raise their educational attainment.
That is why the leader of the council has made a political commitment that should he become leader of a Labour controlled council after May 4th, the KCK will no longer have to struggle to pay for its premises. The council will give KCK – and the borough’s other nineteen supplementary schools – premises for free.
That is also why I am working with my colleagues on the council to help the Kreative Culture Klub find the long term sustainable funding it needs; We want to give the Leyton parents who attended tonight’s show the opportunity to enjoy their kids’ talents for just that little bit longer.
For more information about the Kreative Culture Klub email: kck_enq@hotmail.com or call co-ordinator Yvonne Bailey (pictured right) on 020 8529 5455.
March 31st, 2006
David Lammy MP, Government Minister for Libraries, visited Leyton Library today to learn more about the scandal engulfing the local Liberal Democratic party.
Mr Lammy was shocked to hear that local Liberal Democrat councillors proposed selling Leyton Library in the town hall BUT THEN ALSO started a petition AGAINST selling it because of May’s local council elections.
I showed Mr Lammy around Leyton library so he could see for himself the lack of space, lack of disabled access and poor state of the building. Library staff told us there is just no room to expand.
At a council meeting on Wednesday, the Lib Dems voted with the Tories to suspend the entire borough’s libraries renovation programme until after the election when it will be “reviewed”.
If there is a joint Tory and LibDem administration…we know what “review” will mean: CUTS!
David Lammy MP told protestors, “I have seen LibDem dirty tricks before but proposing a policy in the Town Hall AND opposing it locally is just plain wrong”.
March 24th, 2006
Today, George Mitchell school – where I am a governor – launched a major project called “CHALLENGE 2012″.
Challenge 2012 aims to raise enough money to send twelve pupils each, from each of the twenty most deprived countries participating in the Olympics, to school by 2012.
Challenge 2012 is a fantastic project with massive potential. Please read on to see how you can get involved and help.
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‘Challenge 2012: We Can Make a Difference’ by Claire Kirwin, Deputy Head Teacher, George Mitchell School
“As part of Enterprise Week in November we had an Enterprise Challenge where the students were put into ‘companies’ and had to produce a business plan, business cards and some products that could be launched for the 2012 Olympics. They had to come up with a name, a budget and had to purchase items to make their t-shirts, headwear, a flag etc.
When we were judging we came across a t-shirt design that we felt had real potential for further development. As lay people we didn’t quite know how, or what for but we did know a man who might.
As a Director of BiE (business into education), I have met and worked with Tony Kenton who is a ‘Chief Imagineer’ of CPI London, a gentleman and a scholar. He has a business based in Finchley and has the interests of young people, their present and their futures very much at heart.
I met with him and he was instantly taken with the design that our student had produced. We did a lot of doodling and talked through what we might do with this design so that we could raise money for a good cause and perhaps help out with some fundraising for the school as well?
One thing that we knew we wanted and that was to make it a community based project with citizenship, the International community and the 2012 Olympics very much at its heart.
Tony came up with the concept that would embrace all of these, Challenge 2012 – the aim is by the time of the London Olympics in 2012 to have selected 20 of the poorest Olympic countries and have raised funds to pay for the education of 12 students from each country.
We loved this idea and decided that the next stage was to take the design that Tasneem Ahmed, the student who designed the original concept, had done and use it as the inspiration to produce a professional yet not corporate logo. Tony’s design team worked on a number of ideas and finally after several visuals developed the Challenge 2012 logo.
The next step was to see what the logo would look like when produced on a range of clothing and promotional products, so Tony commissioned a hand made embroidered sample to see how the design would look in real life. This proved to be a great success and so Tony contacted Laurie Hale from Yourimage – a company in Surrey that he has worked with before to produce a digitally mastered embroidered sample. This was even better and so Tony got Laurie to produce a small number of samples using the Fruit of the Loom high quality polo shirts.
Now we had a cause, a logo and of course the challenge of getting the whole thing off the ground.
A considerable amount of money needs to be raised over the next six years in order to be able to help make a positive difference to the lives of 240 children and their community’s. To do this there will need to be a whole host of fundraising activities, products, and events that will help us achieve this extremely ambitious goal.
It is hoped that the 2012 Challenge will be a life changing project for those taking part as well as those being helped.
But before we begin properly we need everyone’s help to get publicity and to raise awareness. We need to get people on board who will actually do something, we need to gain the help of schools all over London and the UK, caring entrepreneurs and forward thinking businesses who like us believe that if we all put our minds to it, we can make a difference, we can make the world a better place”.
For further information about Challenge 2012 please contact:
Claire Kirwin, Deputy Headteacher. George Mitchell School, Farmer Rd, Leyton.
Tel: 0208 539 6198
Email: Claire.kirwin@sch.lbwf.gov.uk
March 21st, 2006
Murad Qureshi AM and Jennette Arnold AM, Labour members of the Greater London Assembly, came to Leyton today to show their support for the work I have been doing around the ward.
We knocked on doors in Brewster Rd to talk to residents about what issues they wanted their London Assembly Members to take back to Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London.
I couldn’t let Jennette go without popping into 603 High Road Leyton, to see the ladies from the African Caribbean elders club. They too are very grateful for all the assistance she has given them over the years.
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With Murad Qureshi AM on the doorstep
What a funny man! Jennette and I have a giggle
Leyton’s red and black ladies take Brewster Rd by storm!
March 21st, 2006
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