Moniaive Initiative will be hosting a POP-UP COMMUNITY HUB and information point over the weekend of the Moniaive Folk Festival. It will be an opportunity for all interested community groups to display information about their organisation, showcase projects (current or past), publicise forthcoming events, and generally raise their profile.

We will be opening the Hub from Friday 11th to Sunday 13th May inclusive, 11am until 6pm. The aim is provide a space to showcase all the wonderful things that are available here in Glencairn. We would welcome your leaflets, events posters, or even just some lovely photos to show everybody what you’ve been doing.  We will also be displaying a map of the village to show visitors where the local walks and points of interest are located.

The hub will be essentially un-manned, so we cannot accommodate anything of value (eg, original photos) but a festival steward will be monitoring it on a regular basis. We will be getting the space ready next week and can accept material from Wednesday 9th May onwards. Unfortunately we do not have the resources to print out materials for you, so we can only accept pre-printed material.

If you are interested in displaying information, or have any questions, please get in touch with Kara or Deb (email: kara.moniaiveinitiative@gmail.com or telephone 01848 200601, 10am-3pm weekdays).

 

Moniaive Initiative are pleased to announce that we have received a grant of £6,752 from the Core Strength Local Communities Programme, to cover the bulk of our core organisational costs for the 2018-19 financial year.

This will enable us to continue working on legacy projects to meet our three objectives:

• To relieve rural isolation, social & economic disadvantage due to remote location
• To advance sustainable community development
• To encourage participation in education, arts & culture and leisure for all individuals in the community.

You can find out more about how we intend to meet these objectives by reading our Glencairn & Moniaive Action Plan.  Details of the individual projects we are working on can be found here on our website under OUR PROJECTS, with regular updates on our NEWS page.

 

Funded by Comic Relief through Foundation Scotland.  Comic Relief spends money raised by its fundraising campaigns, Red Nose Day and Sport Relief.

 The Trustees and Staff of Moniaive Initiative would like to thank everyone who helped to make our Playground Opening yesterday such a success. We had a generaous supply of volunteers who helped prepare the park in the morning (including the wonderful bike circuit); those who provided water and electricity for our catering; donations of chocolate and other goodies for prizes; the School for loaning us sports equipment; Playcare, the Institute and the Craigdarroch for loaning catering equipment; The Gala crew and other volunteers who helped organise races and games; and those who stayed to clear up afterwards….and finally, thanks to everyone who turned up to share the day with us!

 

 

 

   

Moniaive Initiative will be joining with members of the local community to carry out a quick Spring Clean from 11am on Sunday 18th March 2017, as part of the Great British Spring Clean.

We aim to litter-pick Macara Park with families, and hope to get the Park looking clean and tidy in readiness for the Official Opening of the new children’s Play Equipment on Sunday 25th March 2017.  If we have enough volunteers, we would also like to litter-pick the path from the School to the Bottom Park.

Other volunteers will litter-pick the road verges within the 30mph zone of Moniaive.

Volunteers need to come warmly dressed.  Rubber gloves and high-vis jackets would be useful, if you have them.  We will provide the bin bags and litter-picking sticks.

We will also be providing hot refreshments for volunteers in the Glencairn Memorial Institute from 11.30am onwards.

We look forward to seeing you on Sunday!

 

We would like to welcome Kara Millen to Moniaive Initiative.  Kara has joined us on a six-month, Big Lottery-funded post as our Community Shop and Hub Development Officer, and will be working entirely on developing this project over the coming weeks.  She has a background in sustainable architecture education and environmental consultancy, and is a strong supporter of a collaborative, inclusive approach as a means for growing and maintaining a more sustainable and resilient community.  Kara lives in Moniaive with her family, and is currently Chair of Moniaive Playcare and a member of the Moniaive Folk Festival committee.  She is also involved with Moniaive Primary School’s eco-group, helping them to gain their Green Flag. She is passionate about sustainable living, outdoor learning and upcycling.

We start the New Year on an exciting note, as we are currently finalising our application to the Scottish Land Fund for the funds with which to purchase our proposed Community Shop & Hub building.

Unfortunately we still have one issue to resolve before that application can be progressed, and that is the revision of our Constitution.  We attempted to resolve this last September, but at that time were unaware of issues against a previous version of our Constitution, which we need to resolve before we can go any further.

We now therefore need to ask members to vote on the following revisions (shown here in italics):

Constitution	Change from a one-tier to a two-tier model
Clause 5	The organisation has power to do anything which is calculated to further its purposes or is conducive or incidental to doing so.   This includes the power to own land/property, to generate income and to employ staff.
Clause 11	Membership is open to any individual aged 16 or over who is a resident of Glencairn as defined by the community council boundary.
Clause 14	The board may, at their discretion, refuse to admit any person to membership where they have reasonable grounds to believe that he/she might, if admitted to membership, act in a manner which would damage the reputation of the organisation, undermine the efficiency of its operations and/or disrupt the proper conduct of its meetings. Membership will not be refused without good cause or explanation, and may not be refused on the basis of gender, age, ethnic background, disability, caring responsibilities, sexual orientation, religious belief, or marital status.
Clause 17	Minimum number of members shall be 20. There is no maximum number of members. The board must keep a register of members, setting out 17.1 for each current member: 17.1.1 his/her full name and address; and 17.1.2 the date on which he/she was registered as a member of the organisation; 17.2 for each former member – for at least six years from the date on which he/she ceased to be a member: 17.2.1 his/her name; and 17.2.2 the date on which he/she ceased to be a member.

A full draft of the proposed, revised Constitution is available to view here, should you wish to review these proposed amends in context:

Moniaive Initiative Constitution_Jan2018

MEMBERS will be contacted by letter / email in the next few days and asked to vote (to either accept or reject the revisions).  Please do take the time to vote, as we are unable to progress our projects until this issue is resolved.

Thank you.

 

This week we launch the first report of our Lower Speed Communities project.  Entitled ‘Make Room for Pedestrians’, the report outlines the results of our recent Community Street Audits.    Those audits look at three main areas of Moniaive, already identified as ‘hotspots’ by previous engagement with local residents, and consider a range of actions that could be undertaken to alleviate issues in those areas.

 Report 1_Making Room for Pedestrians_Nov17

Please take a look at our report and let us know what you think.  Some of the potential actions outlined might be short-term or temporary interventions that we could try for ourselves as a community. Others would require wider public consultation and local authority consents.  Which do you think are worth trying?

You can provide feedback by sending us an email, by posting on our Facebook page, or by leaving comments here on our Website or in our box in Watsons Shop.

We are recruiting a new Project Officer to lead the delivery of our proposed Community Shop & Hub.

• Fixed Term (26 weeks)
• 21 hours per week
• £9 per hour
• Home based and in Moniaive

The successful candidate will have relevant experience in capital project management, fundraising and community consultation.  The project will have a focus on sustainability, alleviating rural disadvantage, and encouraging voluntary participation.

You can read the full JOB DESCRIPTION and JOB SPECIFICATION here:

Job specification MI Community Hub Project Worker Sep 2017

Please email your CV and a covering letter to deb.moniaiveinitiative@gmail.com by 08/12/17.

 

 

Work is progressing on site, despite the miserable weather and waterlogged conditions.  Both the toddler equipment and the Aerial Runway are now safely concreted in place.  Over the next couple of days the wet-pour safety surfacing will be installed around the toddler equipment.

There are stacked bags of woodchip now standing inside the Ayr Street gates.  Please stay away from them: they are very heavy!  This is the loose-fill safety surfacing to go under the Aerial Runway: our contractors will not be able to move it to where it is needed until the ground conditions improve.  The seat will not be installed on the Aerial Runway until this safety surfacing is in place.

All the new equipment will be subject to a safety inspection before it is ready for use, so please remind children to keep away until we say that it is safe to use it.

Thanks for your patience!