To ensure the success and sustainability of your Green Community Hub and its activities, it is really helpful to make links with similar organisations working in the local area. By working with others, you can increase your capacity, reach, and resources, helping you to achieve your goals more quickly. Partnering with others also brings more people together, increases the potential for funding and support, and creates more resilient and sustainable communities. So, how do you work with partner organisations?
Here’s a guide to help you link in with partners at your green hub:
Identify and connect with organisations with similar objectives
Start by researching and identifying key local organisations in the area. Who has an interest in green spaces and nature-based provision? Who has a focus on building resilience and enhancing the skills of individuals in the local community? Who has an interest in ensuring equal access to green spaces for everyone living in the local area?
Once identified, make contact via email, phone, or face to face. Set up meetings, spread the word about what you are trying to achieve with your Green Community Hub work, and see if others are keen to get involved and support it.
Bring partners together
Once you have identified a range of partners, hold a virtual or in-person presentation about, or even a tour of, your hub. Share your ideas for the hub and make it clear what you hope the outcomes to be, but be open to taking on new ideas from partners. This will help you build stronger foundations for your hub, reach out to more individuals, and even gain access to more green spaces within the community.
Set up regular partner meetings
Take feedback from partners on how often they would like to meet up, usually monthly or quarterly are good options, and discuss whether this is better to be done in person or virtually. Once this is agreed upon, ensure that during meetings you give updates on the activities your hub has been delivering, the individuals or groups you have reached, the green spaces you have connected with, and the financial situation of your hub. Reach out to partners to take on new ideas of how to improve your hub and for ideas on gaining more funding to support further development.
Invite partners to join in with Hub activities
Some partners may like to come up with ideas for your hub in terms of activities and funding, some may have groups or individuals that they work with that may like to get involved in activities, and some may want to deliver activities through your hub or get involved in one-off events. Be open to all of these options, and where possible, enable this kind of working, through idea sharing, planning, and delivering.
Refer to your partner’s services
Find out what services your partners already provide and think about whether the individuals or groups you are working with may benefit from these also. Referring to partner services will ensure individuals have more options to continue to engage with green spaces and receive support for their health and wellbeing.
Work together
Building rapport, listening to each other, and working together enables information sharing, and access to resources and information, and allows meaningful links to be created between people, organisations and green spaces.
By following these steps, you will be able to create meaningful links with partners who will support you and what you want to achieve from your Green Community Hub.
