Why me? is a national charity campaigning and advocating for greater access to Restorative Justice for victims in England and Wales. In 2015 we launched our own Restorative Justice Service, giving the right to everyone who has suffered as a result of crime the chance to talk about what happened.

Founded in 1977, Islington Arts Factory is the only multi-arts community centre in the London Borough of Islington and provides over fifty educational courses in art, dance and music for children and adult learners. We believe that creativity should be undertaken for its own sake and that active involvement in the arts encourages positive personal growth throughout life and fosters social cohesion within the area.We offer any individual the facility to express and experience the arts at a low cost – in an environment that is safe, non-judgemental and supportive. In after school, evening and weekend classes and courses talented and inspiring practicing professional artists pass on technical skills, to children, young people and adult life-long learners.

The Third Sector National Learning Alliance (TSNLA) is the national alliance of voluntary and community organisations and social enterprises involved in learning and skills. Our role is to stimulate, inform and listen to the views of civil society learning providers and to be a powerful, credible and authoritative national advocate for their role in providing learning to a broad range of communities, often alongside their main purpose, such as debt advice, drug and alcohol abuse or supported housing.

I was invited to take this part time role at the end of my secondment from NCVO to establish Skills Effect, an independent organisation to promote and support learning and skills in Third Sector organisations. I managed the relationships with our research partners, the Third Sector Research Centre, the Research team at NCVO and the UK Intelligence Network of Sector Skills Councils. I also worked to embed my knowledge and experience of educational policy and structures and my network of learning and skills contacts within the new team.

The UK Workforce Hub was the successor organisation to the Voluntary Sector National Training Organisation (see below) and continued the UK partnership and work on standards and research. I managed four work streams in the Hub: bringing new people to work in the sector; supporting good management and employment practice; developing the skills and knowledge of the workforce; and developing leadership skills, through the Third Sector Leadership Centre, in partnership with Acevo.

The VSNTO was established in 1997 to promote and support the development of a skilled workforce of paid staff and volunteers across the UK. It was the first national body funded to do this for voluntary organisations. I worked closely with voluntary sector partners in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.I led the work with partners to develop the first national occupational standards for trustees, managers of volunteers and fundraisers, wrote the first Voluntary Sector Workforce Plan in 2001 and, in 2003, commissioned a new Voluntary Sector National Skills Strategy and a UK Skills Survey, to inform the work of the proposed UK Workforce Hub.

Project 2001 gave small grants to urban and rural community organisations to invest in skills and learning for their trustees, volunteers or paid staff. This was my first introduction to working in the voluntary sector after sixteen years of working in inner city Further Education. The project evaluation demonstrated the positive impact of learning on confidence, motivation and capacity in small voluntary organisations, at a time when very little funding was available from any source to support that learning. As a result I became interested in the agencies and funding streams that supported workforce development and looked for ways to inform and influence them.