Author: Deborah Castellanos
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A Press Release a Journalist Can Use
I remember sitting in a drafty community hall back in ’94, watching a well-meaning volunteer hand a thick, glossy folder to the local reporter. It was stuffed with jargon, flowery adjectives, and enough corporate fluff to choke a horse. The… Continue reading
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A Wet Weather Plan Decided in Advance
I remember sitting in a drafty community hall back in ’98, listening to a consultant drone on about “multi-agency resilience frameworks” and “resource allocation matrices.” It was all very expensive-sounding, but none of it helped when the heavy snow actually… Continue reading
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Training Volunteers Without a Budget
I remember sitting in a drafty church hall back in ’94, staring at a pile of glossy, expensive training manuals that had cost our little neighborhood group nearly its entire annual budget. We were supposed to be fixing the local… Continue reading
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Getting the Local Paper to Turn Up
I remember sitting in a drafty village hall back in ’94, clutching a stack of glossy, professionally printed flyers that I’d spent our entire community budget on, only to watch them sit untouched in a damp cardboard box. I had… Continue reading
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How Much First Aid Cover You Need
I remember sitting in a drafty community hall during a neighborhood street party back in ’98, watching a toddler trip over a loose paving stone. The panic wasn’t because we didn’t have a bandage; it was the sudden, freezing realization… Continue reading
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Paying Volunteers Back Without Creating Tax Problems
I remember sitting in a drafty church hall back in ’94, watching a lovely woman named Mrs. Gable tearfully explain why she couldn’t afford the tea and biscuits for our community lunch. She’d spent twenty pounds of her own pension… Continue reading
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A Risk Assessment on One Page
I remember sitting in a drafty church hall back in ’94, staring at a twenty-page document from a consultant that looked more like a legal brief than a practical guide. We were just a group of six neighbors trying to… Continue reading
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The Risk Assessment the Council Will Ask for
I remember sitting in a drafty church hall back in ’94, staring at a twenty-page document provided by a consultant that looked more like a legal textbook than a practical guide. We were just trying to organise a simple summer… Continue reading
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The Noticeboard Still Works Better Than Facebook
I remember sitting in a drafty community hall back in ’94, watching a perfectly capable neighborhood group crumble simply because nobody knew where to find the meeting dates. They had a noticeboard, certainly, but it was a chaotic mess of… Continue reading
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A Safeguarding Policy That Gets Read
I remember sitting in a drafty village hall back in the nineties, staring at a thirty-page safeguarding document that had been sent over by a massive national charity. It was written in such thick, legalistic jargon that even I, with… Continue reading
