Southwark Council is leading a cross-Council bid to the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), in collaboration with university and community partners.
The bid is for funding to develop research capacity, and become an evidence-driven organisation, to better address health and social inequalities. Their bid is called Southwark Collaboration for Research and Evaluation, or Southwark CORE for short. You can find out more about the bid from the NIHR website.
The voice of the wider community and voluntary sector are key to shaping these plans. They hope this bid will benefit the local community and voluntary sector in three main ways:
1. Ensuring that the voices and experiences of Southwark’s diverse communities are meaningfully represented in research and development activities. This will support the Council better understand and meet different communities’ needs, to address health and social inequalities.
2. Enabling access to training and capacity development opportunities in research, monitoring, and evaluation for community and voluntary organisation staff and volunteers. This training would be provided in partnership between university, voluntary, and community partners and the Council.
3. Enabling access to data to support the community and voluntary sector with their own research and evaluation work. This would help organisations to monitor their impact and apply for grant funding.
Southwark Council hope to share their current bid plans with you and learn from your views on what you would like to see represented in this collaboration.
Meeting options (please choose which one best suits you, and sign up through the link below):
• In-person meeting, Camberwell Library (meeting room 3), Friday 14 July, 12 pm – 1.30 pm (lunch and refreshments will be provided, please sign up to share any dietary needs)
• Online Teams meeting, Monday 17 July, 5.30 pm – 7 pm (please sign up to receive the meeting link)
Please share this invitation with your networks, it is open to all community and voluntary groups working in Southwark.
If you have any further questions or want to contribute to this bid but cannot attend either of these dates, please contact Gargie Ahmad on the Public Health team at gargie.ahmad@southwark.gov.uk or 07934350801.
This collaboration will be a 5-year project if successful in getting funding. Any groups who are interested in joining the collaboration but cannot contribute at this time will remain very welcome to participate at a later date. Thank you.
