‘Deloitte Social Innovation Pioneers’ was launched today, with Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus, pioneer of the microfinance movement and worldwide advocate of social business.

It’s been a while since we last blogged – three months to be exact – but it hasn’t been as relaxed on the work front. The projects we’re supporting as part of Digital Activism are moving along and, after the naturally quieter summer period, initial plans are starting to be realised. Here is a brief update of how we’re supporting the Digital Activism communities to campaign and lobby for change through online tools.

The Future Communities blog is moving to a new home at Social Life, a new venture created by the Young Foundation.  Please come and visit us and thank you for your interest, comments and contributions over the past couple of years.    

The Jan Foundation involver’s volunteers from the community in tackling one of the community’s most damaging issues – domestic violence. Jan Foundation train’s volunteers to give long-term mentoring support to victims of domestic violence. They train and support community groups to find new ways to effectively tackle Domestic Violence in their neighbourhoods.

This site has now been taken over by the Bemerton Heath Inter-Agency Group! The IAG consists of residents, council, schools, churches, the Trussell Trust, the police – any group that works with or is concerned with Bemerton Heath. Anything that is an issue for Bemerton is an issue for us – from speeding and dog-fowling [...]

One of the real eye-openers for me in doing this research has been seeing just how much alcohol is costing society.

Nine years ago Cambourne was an empty field in the flat Cambridgeshire countryside. Today, the roads are filled with Mini estates in fashionable colours and mothers cycling to pick up their children from school. Birdsong and the smells of manure still fill the air. Towns like this are known as ‘exurbs’ by town planners – new developments that are different to suburbs in that they aren’t annexed to existing cities. Estate agents call it ‘countryside light’, well suited to urbanised professionals who commute into bigger cities and are starting their families.