We have continued to use our Nourish Fund – a fund from our profits – to maintain a level of information, support and training to enable voluntary and community groups to become more sustainable. As there was no local contract exclusively for capacity building for the voluntary and community sector in Newham this was welcome and well used. This year we have continued to work with the local authority on the participatory budgeting programme supporting residents that were successful winning grants. We held their grant when they didn’t have a project dedicated bank account, supported them with project management, safeguarding and budget management training. This has resulted in projects being run well and some participants choosing to continue the project and formalise as a voluntary or community group. We were successful in winning 5 years funding from UKRI to develop 3 community research networks for marginalised communities namely marginalised women, refugees and migrants and young people with SEND. We have been working with groups to establish these networks so they are managed and led by organisations representing the marginalised community with our support. Ultimately these networks will provide support and peer learning for similar organisations opportunities for consortia bidding and training for members to become Citizen Social Scientists. Our ESOL exchange project continues, and the steering group has developed a new strategic plan to broaden the reach and content of the exchange. This will make knowledge and shared understanding better for all members of the network. We completed 3 pieces of commissioned work to support groups with specific capacity needs or evaluation of projects. We are also a community partner on an ICS wide project to encourage people from the Global majority to understand and get involved in health and social care research. This has involved holding information events, a newsletter and electronic noticeboard showing opportunities to get involved. In this project we primarily work via groups working with and run by the global majority. Covid exposed the fact that the pool of volunteers for medical research is not reflective of the population. This project seeks to address that resulting in procedures and medicines designed for all parts of the community. This year we appointed a part time CEO and Finance Officer so giving us a core team to take us forwards. Through sitting on committees and attending meetings we have continued to be seen as an authority of the voluntary and community sector in east London in both health (ICS) and local authority forums.

Composts stakeholders are primarily voluntary and community organisations and those intending to establish one such organisation. As an infrastructure organisation in this field, we are often sought out for our knowledge of the sector or called on the act as a bridge between the organisations in the sector and the statutory bodies so we would count the statutory sector as a stakeholder. Finally, we engage with funders to highlight trends and needs we are seeing within the voluntary and community sector to encourage them to direct their funds towards these needs. Our ESOL Exchange has been running since 2008 and we took the advantage of a lull in activity to work with the steering group to develop a new strategy that will broaden the mission of the ESOL exchange going forward. The steering committee is made up of large and small organisational members of the Exchange as well as tutors and groups working with potential learners. Going forward it shall not only support ESOL providers and organisations that support potential ESOL learners but will also seek to bring together other organisations and individuals that support the ESOL learner on their journey. Eg Welcome unit in the local authority that meets, greets and helps refugees and migrants settle into the area. Our Nourish Fund applicants are analysed so we have an awareness of the areas of capacity building organisations are looking for and this in turn shapes our training programme. We also feed this information into the London Funders forum that we are part of. Through our monthly newsletter we have a regular item that is a spotlight on one of the organisations we work with. This involves a deep dive into the organisation and any intelligence gained on our practice, challenges facing the sector or unmet needs are fed into our monthly team meetings and action needed in instigated – this could be a generic training need for the sector, a process introduced by a statutory body that is causing voluntary and community sector members difficulty. In establishing our 3 community research networks we have held meetings with the broader marginalised communities to inform and promote the networks and have worked with interested organisations to help them form and lead the networks. Once the membership and steering groups of each network has been established our staff member will teach and encourage each network to consult its members on the content of the network programme The VCFSE alliance for north east London ICS and the London wide CVS network, both of which we are members of, have both carried out consultation this year by surveys sent to the sector which have been poorly responded and we have been told by the sector that they do not have the interest or time to fill in surveys that do not result in any change to the situation so we have moved away for this consultation method to a more individual and in depth engagement with fewer groups where appropriate.

Directors are not paid for their role of director. However, the following directors have been paid for work with voluntary and community groups they have carried out for Compost. Anne Crisp - £10,325.00 Caroline Rouse - £15,725.00 Keith Ansell - £12,000.00

No transfer of assets other than for full consideration