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Motivating village renewal, Pendeen West Cornwall

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Pendeen, a former tin-mining village on the far west coast of Cornwall, has for too long felt isolated from mainstream agency priorities and services. Now it is renewing itself with the help of an innovative project that has brought together formerly competing local groups to support one another's bids and share facilities. And it has made full use of the STEPS motivation programme - helping to give both residents and service professional alike a shared sense of purpose, an understanding of each others' needs and a 'can do' attitude to turning around the area's prospects

PENDEEN is an isolated village on the cliffs of the far west of Cornwall. It's a place where many residents feel not only socially excluded but 'process excluded' - dislocated from the plans and priorities of mainstream agencies, the 'village the authorities forgot'...

Into this context in 2000 came a project established to turn around this perception and to deliver meaningful neighbourhood renewal. Helen Rodda was, until recently, project manager for Pendeen Community Project, an enabling group that has helped to facilitate the development of community facilities and services in the village. The project has recently come to an end as there is no longer a need for it - residents are doing it for themselves.

The challenges in Pendeen

Project manager Helen Rodda: 'There was a tendency here amongst many residents towards despondency, a fatalism. This was at least partly due to the physical and social isolation of the community, a sense of a lack of opportunity. Negative attitudes when we came here were common. "No one cares about us, nothing will improve" was pretty much the view. People in Pendeen had very little faith in remote officialdom, even very locally with the largest town of St Just nearby. Residents of Pendeen felt not only socially excluded, but process excluded - they didn't feel part of agencies' work in the district. Pendeen, to many residents, felt like a part of the district that had been forgotten.'

Project Manager: Helen Rodda Project manager Helen Rodda: 'There was a tendency here amongst many residents towards despondency'

Early on, she says, this attitude was used to challenge what she was doing with the project. 'There were some people who were very unhappy I was here. They would suggest there was no need for outside help. A small but vocal minority were very clear that they didn't want anything to change.'

However, as more got involved in the project, more and more residents defended it, forcing those who were suspicious to back off.

Now the work is being handed back to a re-energised community. Helen Rodda: 'The aim is for us as professionals to leave as there will be no need for us any more. It's not a case of the funding ending, it's a case of residents now having the ability, with their own building and their own structures and organisations, to move projects forward successfully themselves.'

One of the key successes of the project, Rodda believes, was to help all the various groups share information with one another and to join up what they do. 'If lots of different community groups all want their own building, the chances are that each one will fail to get it, they just wont have enough money or influence.

'However, if you get them to trust one another and stop thinking that each group is a competitor for limited resources, they can join together and get the funding using a collective approach. If, say, five projects want different things and prove the need for them, they can all achieve their own aims by supporting each others bids - that's what building capacity in a community is all about to me.'

'If, say, five projects want different things and prove the need for them, they can all achieve their own aims by supporting each others bids'

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