Welcome from our CEO
In this newsletter, meet our new interim Chair, Paulette Rowe who has been on our Board almost from the beginning and, as you will read, is something of a London success story herself.
I must of course mention our wonderful founding Chairman, Sir Trevor Chinn, who stepped down this summer after three years service. Trevor has played a huge part in establishing the Mayor's Fund for London and developing our high standards and rigour. He was directly involved in developing our identity and strategy and has been an inspirational figure. For my own part, I must say I have learnt more in my three years working with Trevor than in twenty years before that! We really appreciate his contribution to our cause.
In partnership with Community Links, we are working particularly hard on developing our new major project - Flying Start for London. This project is focused on the key early years and how we can make sure proven interventions are used and used well.
If you would like to get involved, there is no better way than buying a table at the Square Mile Masked Ball of which we are the beneficiary charity. 50% of the price of all tables purchased through us is donated directly to us, so please contact Liz Reid for further details.
Chris Robinson
CEO
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Q&A with new Interim Chair, Paulette Rowe
Paulette is Strategy Director at NBNK Investments plc. Prior to NBNK, she was an executive director at Tesco Personal Finance and spent 7 years at the Royal Bank of Scotland. Her roles at RBS included Managing Director, NatWest Retail Banking and CEO, RBS European Consumer Finance. She has also worked internationally for General Electric’s Private Equity and Global Consumer Finance businesses.
Paulette was born and raised in inner London. She has been active in the not-for-profit sector for many years, including serving on the board of the Prince's Youth Business Trust in the West Midlands and as a trustee at Community Service Volunteers.
As the new Interim Chair of the Mayor’s Fund for London, we put a few questions to her.
Q: You have been involved with the Mayor’s Fund as Trustee since the start. Why did you decide to get involved?
PR: I was brought up in London in a similar background to some of the children and young people that the Mayor’s Fund works with. I was lucky enough to do well at school and progress and I now have a successful career. Having worked outside of the UK for a while, I returned to London wanting to give something back to my City. The Mayor’s Fund for London is the perfect opportunity to do that.
Q: As the Fund has developed, what, in your view, have been the main milestones in the Fund’s history to date?
PR: From a blank sheet of paper, the Mayor’s Fund for London has grown, building strong partnerships with Local Authorities, major corporates and voluntary organisations. In particular, we have strong and productive strategic partnerships with Barclays Capital and Goldmans Sachs. Under the stewardship of our founding Chairman, Sir Trevor Chinn, the Fund has worked with 58 schools and supported over 8,000 children. 220 parents and carers have been actively supported and 300 teachers and support staff have benefited from targeted training sessions. We are proud of all of our projects, but in particular the launch of Shoreditch Citizens and Young London Working have been key highlights for me, along with working with It’s Your Life which is producing extraordinary results.
Q: Why are you referred to as “Interim” Chair?
PR: I was delighted to be voted in as Chair by my fellow Trustees, however at this time, I am unable to commit to the full 3 year term. It is vital for the Fund that whoever is Chair is able to commit the time required, so I agreed to stand as Interim Chair until the Fund is able to find a suitable candidate. I am really enjoying the role and will review the situation in the coming months.
Q: What are the key challenges for the Fund for the next 2-3 years?
PR: We have got off to a great start. We have an engaged Board of Trustees, the strong support of our Patron and created a programme with excellent partners. Taking a strategic role in fighting child poverty, we’ve raised the money required to invest in projects that have changed the lives of children and young people in London. The challenge for us now is to demonstrate, through robust evidence, that our current projects are making a difference, are cost effective and scalable. We also need to develop future evidence based projects, such as Flying Start for London, in order to expand our programme into other areas of London.
Q: What is Flying Start for London and how will it make a difference to London’s children?
PR: Flying Start for London will connect those families in most need with proven, evidence based interventions in parenting, parental support, numeracy and literacy. The aim is to get pre-school children ready for school. We will work with London’s most disadvantaged children to improve their life chances and ensure that they are on track to learn when they start school.
Q: With the Mayoral elections fast approaching, what effect, if any, would a new Mayor have on the Fund?
PR: We enjoy a good relationship with the current Mayor. It has always been the intention that the role of Patron will be offered to any Mayor, regardless of their political affiliation. I am sure that all three Mayoral candidates will see the value in the work that we do and will continue as Patron should they be elected.
Q: What next for the Fund?
PR: We will continue to support our current programme and ensure that it is sustainable. We will be working up Flying Start for London – engaging with hard to reach families and ensuring that their children are school ready. Our focus will continue to be on ensuring that London's disadvantaged children have a better start in life, engage in education and therefore, ultimately, get a decent job.
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Prince Harry, Boris and the Cheeky Girls - thank you BGC!
A Monday morning in the company of Prince Harry, Chris Evans, the Cheeky Girls and our illustrious Patron Boris Johnson. Just a normal start to the week for us then at the Mayor's Fund!
Well maybe not every week, but this certainly was the case a few weeks ago at the BGC Partners charity day at their offices in Canary Wharf. We were delighted to once again be one of the beneficiary charities for whom all the BGC traders give up their commission for a day and we enjoyed a visit to the trading floor to see some of the celebrities in action on the phones. There was a fantastic buzzy atmosphere amongst the traders, no doubt helped by the presence of the Cheeky Girls in very skimpy outfits!
Mayor Boris Johnson kicked off the day with a speech to the 400 traders encouraging them to get into the spirit on our behalf "May you rip off as many clients around the world today as possible to help tackle poverty and literacy for deprived children in London."
With a record breaking 18 billion euro trade by Prince Harry, the day is set to be a record breaking fundraiser for all the charities involved and is a fitting tribute to all the 658 BGC staff who lost their lives in the 9/11 attacks 10 years ago and in whose memory the charity day was begun.
Many thanks to BGC for including us in such a worthwhile day.
Reflections on the Riots
by Chris Robinson
The riots have gone…for now, at least. The individual rioters are being caught and dealt with by the justice system. It’s a time to look for patterns and causes and to work at prevention. But the political focus has moved on into party conference season, the problems of the international economy … and who will win this year's X Factor.
There has been reaction to the riots of course. If we can find a convenient enemy then this serves as a focus for quick knee-jerk activity. It would seem 'gangs' were the early nominees. Now clearly gang activity is very damaging and negative. However, as is often the case, the picture is more complex. Hopefully the recent debates on gangs - and even more crucially any responses in terms of new funding - will focus on the evidence not opinion. But my point here is wider than that.
If we just focus on individual rioters we may focus on retribution. But does that hold up when we start running into the hundreds and then thousands of rioters? Surely we have to look beyond the individuals to the trends, to the patterns. We need to think about causes not symptoms. Violence, knives, rioting and gangs are symptoms not causes.
What would have stopped similar behaviour in the past and what stops it for most people now? Stronger communities, stronger positive values of what is right and wrong, more respect and empathy for others.
What can we do to improve things? Firstly, we have to keep things in perspective. Many young people, for example, demonstrate these positive values every day. Many communities do work. Britain is not all 'broken' at all. London generally certainly is not, nor is it 'sick'.
Secondly, we have to work on the positive. At the Mayor's Fund for London, we started with engaging London Citizens to help build and develop community leadership in East London. As a new Fund we wanted to hear from local people what they wanted and not impose our views. Through London Citizens we developed 'Shoreditch Citizens'. When it was launched in May this year, over 400 people turned up from churches, mosques, schools, businesses, colleges, residents groups and trade union branches. They felt like a community. Many community leaders have now been trained as to how they can effectively make a difference.
Of course, such community development work and a focus on community values is very old-fashioned and even out of fashion. Very few funders invest in such work now. It is not a quick fix. Building communities and building on community values is not new. But it works. It takes time but it builds a different set of values and responses. Around a third of London's population is under 25. In Tower Hamlets the proportion is 34%. In the past community often revolved around large common employment - like in the Docks, in my childhood, or Ford at Dagenham. It may well be the case that for young people now we have to find different ways to connect, different vehicles for community links. However it is done, building community is key.
It's not the only thing that is needed, of course. We have projects involved in improving literacy and the employable skills, another making sense of the employment maze and others. We always try and look for the evidence first and improve the positives.
It is so much easier to just find someone to blame and it is a shame we are seeing that happen again. Invariably it seems this type of lazy response ends up with the poor being found to be at fault in some way.
Or you can look deeper and build stronger. It’s not actually about more money. It's about using what we do have more wisely, based on evidence of what works as opposed to what seems like a good idea. It's about building positive reasons to belong.
We can react and recriminate. Or we can rebuild. As Peig Sayers, the Irish storyteller said: 'the people survived in the shelter of one another.' What do you want to do?
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