Community forums for Exmoor and West Somerset

Rod over at the Catalyst Social Business Blog suggested two community forum resources which look good for helping to build local communities.

Netmums is a national UK organisation whose mission is:

To help families have fun with and enjoy their children;
To bring people together to make our local communities more lively and friendly;
To make it unnecessary for any mum to feel lonely or isolated;
To make sure every parent has access to all of the local support and advice available - from other mothers and from professionals;
To give mothers a voice, locally and nationally, on issues of importance to them.

They have over 345, 000 members throughout the UK. It is a members only site but membership is free and immediate and it's open to dads as well as mums. The local site for Exmoor and West Somerset based on my post code of TA24 is Somerset. I signed up and it looked packed with information for people with kids.

UKVillages says about itself:

Launched in April 2000, http://www.UKVillages.co.uk is now widely recognised as the national and local community website for the UK, providing a fully interactive home page and tailored portal for over 31756 villages, towns, cities and suburbs in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. One of the fundamental features of each of the UKVillages.co.uk home pages is that every community shares information with its neighbours - we strongly believe that no community exists in isolation, and the structure of UKVillages reflects this. UKVillages offers local people a means of sharing information and promoting their community and its activities and services to a wider audience, it allows tourists and visitors the chance to research trips and holidays around the UK, and gives businesses and organisations a unique opportunity to show how they support, and contribute to community life, at the same time as reinforcing their brand and key marketing messages. Independently owned and managed, The Sunday Times chose UKVillages as one of the Top 50 British Brands on-line.

There is a snazzy map facility you can click on to see local communities. Close to me are West Luccombe, Stickle Path and Five Bells near Watchet.

Both look as if they would merit further examination.

Your comments or suggestions are welcomed

Bye for now

Rob