NEWS ITEMS
The first version of this page was released in June 2019. Activities before then are not reported on this page but, should you wish to, you can find out about the early stages of this Initiative from the About page, not least from its various tabs (Why? When? etc.). The only significant Event held before June 2019 was the Societies Fair that was held on 18th November 2018. News Items #01 and #02 report on decisions that were taken between that date and the release of this page.

NEWS ITEM #01
GVGI has 2 main objectives:
(1) increasing the awareness of everyone in the region of its many community-support groups, and
(2) encouraging those groups to appreciate & support each other when appropriate.

After the Societies Fair in November 2018, Peter (GVGI's founder-executive) had expected that he would spend much of 2019 focusing on the second of those objectives by developing 'Discussion Groups' (as referred to in Idea#06 and elsewhere in the site). He thought he would start by focusing on just 2 or 3 local Community Halls and see where that took him. However, further consideration led him to realise that he needed the support of more halls than that if the idea of holding Discussion Groups was to be developed in a meaningful way. As that would take more time than he had available, Peter reviewed his approach and decided to leave work on Discussion Groups for another year and instead spend more time on increasing GVGI's profile. Having noted that GVGI's Online Directory had been well received as had the idea (tried out at the Societies Fair) of distributing a hard copy version of that Directory along with some articles within a brochure, it was decided to prepare a new 'hard copy' brochure/directory, aiming to distribute it by November 2019. Work on that is now underway. See Brochures.

25th June 2019

NEWS ITEM #02
We have set this NEWS page to be one of the five pages linked-to from the top of every page in the site. It replaces the VENUES page. This combines (a) the realisation that people who have visited the site before will want it to be easy to find out what has happened since their last visit with (b) acceptance that it will take time for us to develop relations with enough of the Community Halls (and other venues) to such an extent that they will play a major role in what we are doing so drawing such attention to that work, important though it is, risks distracting attention from the other things that we are doing.

25th June 2019

News Alert dated 13th November 2019
We are thinking of reversing the above change! Whilst it will take time to develop relations with many Community Halls, there are other community-supporting venues that merit attention, including pubs and cafés. More on this in due course.

NEWS ITEM #03
GVGI is progressing in a way that is quite common for this type of initiative:
(1) someone has some ideas that are welcomed by some other people;
(2) those ideas initially multiply then some are focused on and others are put to the side;
(3) a 'plan of action' is developed and things start to happen;
(4) ...things either go well or they do not!

GVGI is moving into step (3). Not much has happened to date - we have just this web site and one Societies Fair (and its brochure) to point to - but discussions have progressed and some decisions have been made that have led to greater focus on what GVGI is trying to do. That has led us to put some of our original ideas to the side, not killing them off but leaving them either for later or for others to do. [See the note at the top of the IDEAS page.] This is all part of our step-by-step approach so little has changed. However, we have moved the emphasis within this site from comment & ideas towards plans & action. That should both make us more efficient with our time and encourage others to take us more seriously, hopefully leading some people to come up with suggestions and support.

Not least because a need has been identified, we have decided to spend some time on seeing if we can help stabilise and perhaps even improve various means of distributing information around the area. To do that, we have set up EVENT04. That Event will be launched 'formally' within the Brochure we hope to release in November but for the moment the page acts as something we can refer to in our research on the matter.

20th September 2019

NEWS ITEM #04
We have relaunched EVENT03 which has been renamed 'Supporting our local online Events Diary providers'. That now complements more clearly EVENT04 which relates to 'Supporting our local information-providing periodicals'. This relaunch arose out of preparations for 'Open Letter 2' which will be included within the Brochure that will be released later this month.

4th November 2019

NEWS ITEM #05
We have released our latest brochure. It may be downloaded from the Brochures page. Copies will be distributed by hand around our Friendship Area (identified in the Where? tab on the About page). [Help with the distribution would be appreciated!] We hope to obtain feedback that will enable us to improve our Directory, develop our Events #03 and #04, and obtain assistance for the Societies Fair we intend to hold in 2020.

22nd November 2019

NEWS ITEM #06
We had hoped that this day would see the release of the Second Edition of our Second Brochure. The main difference between that edition and the one released in November (the subject of News Item #05) was to be the inclusion of a new Open Letter #4, 'Pub Challenge'. That was intended to act as the launch of Event05 ('Supporting local businesses, particularly pubs/inns & cafés, in their efforts to play a positive role in their local communities'). However, the expected spread of the coronavirus Covid-19 means that it would be irresponsible of us to encourage anything that might lead to additional social interaction at a time when pubs are shut and 'social distancing' & 'self isolation' are being encouraged. We have paused production of the new brochure but have gone ahead with the launch of Event05, albeit in a way that, to start with at least, is very different to what was originally intended. We will keep the situation under review. We wish you all well and hope that the next few months will be kind to you.

24th March 2020