Tim Loughton joined other MPs at the Houses of Parliament for an official parliamentary launch of #wewillgather. The launch o all the MPs who came and to all the charities who turned out as well. They included Round Table, Volunteering England, Toynbee Hall, Mosaic LGBT Youth Centre, Timebank and Centre for Creative Collaboration.
was held on 15th October and was sponsored by Simon Danczuk, the MP for Rochdale.
The concept behind #wewillgather is to enable communities to start an action and find people to help complete it. Its inception derived from the thousands of people enthusiastically grabbing brooms and joining forces to clean up the streets of London during the riots in August last year, which was largely fuelled by a Twitter campaign started by Dan Thompson of Revolutionary Arts in Worthing, West Sussex.
In keeping with this community cohesion and goodwill, Dan subsequently launched #wewillgather to the public. The initiative, developed by Fresh Egg which is also based in Worthing, allows individuals and groups seeking the aid of volunteers to do so quickly and simply. The objective is to continue positive actions in the community such as the riot clean up all over the country and is supported by Nesta Investment, vInspired, RSA and the Cabinet Office.
The #wewillgather hub allows individuals and groups to effectively organise without organisation. Those seeking a helping hand can call for such by simply posting a single tweet on Twitter with the hashtag ‘#wewillgather’, the word ‘help’ and a postcode. Posting this tweet will see the wewillgather website automatically create an Action Page, on which additional details can be entered by the organiser, and a record of those willing to help is kept.
The Parliamentary launch was a huge success with former Children’s Minister and MP for East Worthing and Shoreham, Tim Loughton giving an enthusiastic speech alongside the Minister for Civil Society Nick Hurd, former Labour minister Hazel Blears and Labour MP Stella Creasy.
Representatives of UK charities were also in attendance, from the Round Table to Volunteering England and Toynbee Hall to Mosaic LGBT Youth Centre.