Celebrating 50 Years of Lancaster District CVS
Lancaster District CVS is 50 years old this year and last week we invited friends and colleagues from across the voluntary, community, faith, social enterprise, health, and statutory services sectors to join us at Lancaster Town Hall to celebrate that milestone, reflect on what we have all achieved over the decades, and look to the future.
We were thrilled to have so many people with us, joining in enthusiastically with the activities that we’d planned, which included creating a collage of words and images that celebrated the past achievements of all the organisations represented, as well as looking with hope towards the future and sharing our ambitions for our sectors and our communities here in Lancaster. We also spent some time giving local groups a chance to get some peer feedback on their in-progress projects, as well as beginning a conversation about a shared set of principles around volunteering that everyone in the district will be able to sign up to.
Cat Smith, MP for Lancaster and Fleetwood, was there, along with Lancaster City Council’s chief executive Mark Davies, and the Leader of the City Council Caroline Jackson.
As well as being our 50th anniversary celebration event, it was also the launch of FestiVOL, something that we intend to become an annual event, a celebration – a festival – of the voluntary sector as a whole.
2023 will be the first year of our next fifty years and we already have some exciting plans to accompany our brand new FestiVOL. These include two volunteering fairs, one in Morecambe and one in Lancaster; a funding fair that will give local groups a chance to sit down with funders and discuss their funding needs; and our Volunteer Achievement Awards, our first in-person ceremony since 2019.
Communities, community organisations, and the partnerships that we build with the NHS, the police, the fire service, district and county councils, and beyond are vital to us all, especially when times are challenging. We hope that you will join us as we continue to work together to make Lancaster district a safe, healthy, inspiring, and fun place for everyone.
