PrintImagine that you run a business with 100 employees. 70 of them are out working on the shop floor, while the rest are kept in a locked room, unable to get involved. If you want to grow your business, you could certainly help the 70 to work more efficiently and more effectively. But your growth will always be limited until you open the door to the 30 and allow them to work.
In the same way, to produce sustainable economic growth we must tap into the region's unused potential. As well as supporting existing business and those already in work, we need to harness the time and skills of people who aren't currently able to participate in the economy.
EEDA's new economic participation programme will continue the work of the current 'Investing in Communities' core product - identifying the barriers to economic participation and enabling individuals to access jobs or start their own business. At a regional level we'll continue to focus on issues including maximising the economic benefits of migrant workers, providing finance to business start-ups and supporting a thriving third sector. We'll also carry on the Investing in Communities fund, devolving funding for economic participation to local decision makers across the region.
Economic exclusion isn't just unfair, it's economically inefficient. And by creating opportunities for participation, we'll benefit everyone who lives or works in the East of England.
Comments (1)
There's little to argue with in this assessment.
In Suffolk we remain an unskilled bunch. perhaps not properly equipped to meet modern needs. It must be recognised that, public sector apart, 90% of workers are employed by micro firms, often less than four employees. Here the concept of growth is of less importance that sustainability - a new word for survival.
It's vital to create better links between funders (often another word for government) and the community. That link has been lost, and many folk feel disempowered - it doesn't matter what we say, nobody listens. In Felixstowe they have just taken away our health service, and failed to listen to our protests, and now we face an extra 2,700 homes being built - which will totally destroy our character. Does anyone care?
As a community radio station we believe in the power of people to produce results, given appropriate recognition and the power to make change. Too often that sense of community is sidelined, even dismissed in favour of other considerations.
Our experience, talking to local people, is that there is a willingness to get involved, but within the voluntary sector (at least) funding is often project based, and short-term. We are constantly battling to understand what the latest initiative really wants, and VCS have to tailor their projects to meet the targets created by funders, and not serve the community's needs. Yet money is easily found for consultants who produce meaningless reports.
Personally, as an economist, I've long argued against the concept of growth - it is far too simplistic. People are satisficers, they only do enough to keep themselves (and sometimes their bosses) satisfied. Our workforce does enough, it rarely works at full efficiency - and we cannot expect anyone to do that, in any case, without having a sense of fulfilment.
Yet in many community projects folk will work tirelessly, because they are committed, and believe in the cause.
It is possible to tap into that enthusiasm, but only if people can see the direct results of their efforts. That their grandmother can obtain suitable, sympathetic health care, that their children are wisely educated, and not just forced to match government-imposed standards that the work they do is worthwhile, and does not just serve a shareholder in some far distant land.
There's a book here somewhere, waiting to be written, and perhaps, one day, people will appreciate what it is to be alive in the best region of the finest country in the world. If we continue to believe that growth will provide all the answers we will exhaust our workforce, destroy our beautiful landscape and then lose our creative talent.
Be warned, you read it here first.
Posted on February 26, 2008 7:43 PM