A message from the new Chair and Vice-Chair
Kate Scott-Hughes and John Peart are the new Chair and Vice-Chair of CSRA. This post introduces them, their priorities, and what's coming next.
This week, we’ve taken over responsibility for running CSRA as Chair and Vice-Chair. We’ve both played an important part of developing CSRA over the past few years, and now we’re both really excited to start working on what comes next.
We’ve written this note to share a bit about our joint priorities, and to let you know about what’s going to start happening soon.
Thank you to Ollie
We’d like to start by saying “thank you” to Ollie Entwistle, who has led CSRA for the last 9 years. In that time, he’s made CSRA one of the most influential and visible staff networks in the Civil Service, and we are proud to take over from him. We were thrilled that he was recognised for his efforts at our Impact Index event last month, and we’re sure he’ll continue to be a powerful voice for LGBT civil servants.
Our priorities
We met last week to discuss our joint priorities.
In the short term, we will be spending some time recruiting some new volunteers and establishing a plan of work for the next 12 months. We want to focus in 3 areas:
- supporting departmental networks to develop and deliver great support for their members
- developing sustainable regional support, including better support for volunteers in the regions around the UK
- starting focused projects to improve the experience of civil servants who define themselves as bisexual, trans and ‘other’
We will also be thinking about how we build upon the success of CSRA’s existing work, like our social events, our conference, and how we celebrate LGBT History Month and Pride in 2018.
We’re going to need your help
As part of our plans, we’re going to need some help. We’ve had a small but dedicated team of volunteers working on CSRA projects for the last few years. Some of those volunteers can no longer be involved, due to other commitments, so we’re thinking about how we rebuild a team of volunteers.
Look out for volunteering opportunities in the coming weeks and months on some of our new project work, and to help with running CSRA as a network.
What’s next?
Whilst we’re in this planning phase, we’ll probably be a bit quieter than usual: but our usual activities, like our social events, will continue.
If you’ve got any questions, or you want to raise an idea for something we could do, do get in touch with us.