Over the next few months there will be a number of opportunities for Fellows who would like to become more engaged on a voluntary basis in the way the RSA is run – and my colleague Brinda Sittapah, the RSA’s Governance Manager outlines what is happening and the opportunities available:

Q) What are the available posts? A) We’re looking for three types of hands-on leaders to collaborate with other Fellows and at times staff to help the Society meet its charitable goals – or ‘undertakings for publick good’ as our founder William Shipley would have put it. In practice that means:

A Fellowship Councillors for each Region/Nation An elected Fellowship Councillor to represent each of the 14 Regions/Nations in the UK and Ireland – and working as an integral part of a hands-on Regional /…

RSA NE held a very challenging event in Darlington on Tuesday 15th May exploring the topic of combating the sexual exploitation of children.  Wendy Shepherd, who is on the frontline of Barnardo's efforts in the region, shared her experiences of what is really happening under our noses with a very provocative call to action.

I've put together a Storify record of the event at http://storify.com/JamieACooke/combating-the-sexual-exploitation-of... which has some of the tweets and comments from the evening.  I was certainly left stunned by the pervasiveness of the problem, it is definitely something that communities and organisations need to be doing more about.

At the same time, I was proud of RSA NE for organising the event.  This sort of challenge to society (followed up by a provocative event at the Newcastle Encounter the following evening) is exactly what we should be…