Mentors Team Report 2016 02

Report for Freegle Mentors

February 2016

Mentors currently have 12 members and 1 Board observer.

Mentors are there to advise new Group Owners in their first 6 months of set up as required and continuously thereafter, if still needed, we give support to struggling groups. We are caretakers for groups that have been given up by their owners and we contact groups that are not being actively moderated to offer help.

If you know of any group that is being left unmoderated for long periods, mentors can be contacted in strictest confidence. We would rather help out and get things back on track before a group ends up being abandoned.

February started off with mentors discussing messages to add to our new Modtools configuration for caretaker groups. This is still a work in progress and we are adding new messages as we are finding they are needed. All messages are agreed by the team before being added.

Jacky emailed mentors from Development and asked us to review the Google doc for the revision of the mentors remit. Members of the mentor team helped with comments and are happy with the recommendations for the revised remit.

We discussed the possibility of merging a caretaker owned group with a local group. The local group are currently running both and felt it made sense to make the two groups one large single group. After further consultation with the team currently running both groups, a request will be sent to GAT.

Two new groups were added to the caretaker list this month. Cardiff freegle and Rhonnda Cynon Taf. The owner and co-owner both decided they wanted to give up moderating and so both groups are looking for new owners. Christian made up some new logos for the groups and they have both been updated.

Mentors discussed the coordinator position as Sheila was standing down. After some discussion it was decided that a new co-coordinator taking the pressure off and sharing some of the work would be a good idea. Amanda volunteered for the position, so the team polled and it was agreed that she should work alongside Sheila for a while and they will spread the load between them, then reconsider the coordinator role again sometime in the near future.

We debated the use of the mailbox. Generally mentors use their personal email addresses and cc to the Yahoo group for copy emails. It was suggested on Development that we should use our mailbox more, so emails sent out by the coordinators of the group are now generally sent out using the mailbox, as there are now two of us, it does make it easier to see what each other have done .

Mentors welcomed Andy Ludlow as the Board Observer for the mentor team. He had been an active mentor but now will take a back seat as an observer. The team discussed contacting groups who are not currently using Modtools to offer help with setting it up and using it effectively. Christian will be emailing groups and the mentor team are ready to help anyone who replies to his email.

Lorraine decided to leave the team as she wasn’t actively mentoring any groups. Mentors can contact her via the GAT mailbox when they need to and that leaves her able to concentrate more on the Freegle groups she is active with now.

Currently there are two groups being mentored as new groups and we have a third one that is being mentored as a new owner of an abandoned group.

There has been a request to hand a group over to a Facebook group which is currently unofficial, but is doing much better than the official Yahoo group. The unofficial Facebook moderators have said they would be happy to take the group on if they can continue as they are now. Geeks have said this will be possible to do, but the discussion with the official group owner as to whether this is the best thing for her group is continuing.

The list below is just for the groups that are currently centrally owned and need new owners and mods. If any mod teams local to any of these groups would like to take any of these groups on as permanent new owners, please contact us.

• Barking and Dagenham
• Bicester
• Blackwater and Yateley
• Brewood, Codsall and Stretton Freegle
• Bury
• Cambridge
• Cannock Freegle
• Cardiff
• Chelmsford
• Cheslyn Hay Freeworld recycling
• Dudley – Black country Freeworld
• Durham
• Eastwood
• Havering
• Lichfield Freeworld Recycling
• Llanelli
• Llyn Peninsula
• Rhonnda Cynon Taf
• Scunthorpe
• Skegness
• Skye and Lochalsh
• Taunton
• Trafford
• Warminster
• Warrington
• Washington
• Wrexham
• Yeovil

The list below is of those who just need a little help or are just being cared for temporarily.

• Amber Valley
• Ealing
• Fenland
• Hackney
• Henfield
• Hunts
• Kensington and Chelsea
• Leamington and Warwick
• New Forest West
• Stafford

We have attempted to contact owners of several inactive groups this month and have been successful in making contact with two, there are some others that we have had no success with so far but we are still trying.

GAT have been given access to the caretaker list as our procedures now require and are checking through the core areas to see if any changes need to be made, before the groups are handed to new owners.

The mentor team is still looking for new mods to help out. if anyone thinks they may be able to mentor a new group owner or caretake a group that has been handed over for Freegle to run centrally, please contact us at mentors@ilovefreegle.org . All Caretaker groups are added to modtools. It takes a few minutes extra each time you moderate to clear the messages on extra groups.

mentors@ilovefreegle.org
Mentor team

Links:

• Mentor Team Remit
• Previous report Mentors Team Report 2016 01
• Following report Mentors Team Report 2016 03