‘Better Friends’ online tool launched

A self-assessment tool to help green space Friends and Community Groups reflect and strengthen.

The Parks Community UK (PCUK) team, supported of course by the National Federation of Parks and Green Spaces (NFPGS), have been busy during lockdown creating a very useful and special online tool which has just been launched! 

‘Better Friends’ is a strength-checker tool that is free to use on the PCUK website: https://parkscommunity.org.uk/betterfriends/

It’s the only tool of its type designed specifically to help the thousands of volunteer Friends and community groups who champion and try to improve their local parks and green spaces.

Using it should be an enjoyable process and will help to test the current strength of your group. The survey is a series of questions about your group, membership, set up, outreach, activities, partnerships, and vision. Taking part will help you to think about how your group operates, how effective it is, and areas of activity in which you might improve. After you have completed the questions, you will receive an emailed feedback report from PCUK – including an overall score for your group and scores for the different sections filled in – to be shared with other members of your group.

The aim of ‘Better Friends’ is to support and encourage groups to continue to do the best possible for your local green space and suggest further ideas via the online resources available on the Parks Community website – almost all created by and for other activists like you. You can more accurately pinpoint your strengths and weaknesses and find ways of trying to fix those areas which you’d like to improve on.

You may wish to complete ‘Better Friends’ annually as a strategic assessment and planning tool to help your group identify issues and monitor your progress.

Many thanks to PCUK, NFPGS, Nesta ‘Rethinking Parks’ and Cohere for the development of the ‘Better Friends’ tool. 

Posted on 7th October 2020