Looking at the year ahead

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Happy New Year from all of us at the Community Transport Association! 2016 is well and truly under way, so it’s time to look at the year ahead and see what it holds for us, our members, and for the sector as a whole.

One of our New Year’s resolutions here at the CTA is to make 2016 the year in which community transport is put at the front and centre of the transport sector. We want to let everyone know why the work that our members do is so vitally important to communities across the country; how it provides a vital lifeline to those across the social spectrum and just how much it inspires us.

One of the ways we’re hoping to do this is by building up our social media presence in order to share the message of community transport with as many people as possible. To do this, we’ve set ourselves the target of having 500 followers on Twitter by February 14, a day to celebrate what we love- in our case, transport.

This isn’t just a pre-occupation with technology, but a genuine interest in better and more meaningful engagement: because our strength as a movement comes from the daily connections we make with each other and the people who care about the same things we do. We think that social media offers an opportunity to massively improve the way we inform, involve and inspire the people we work for and with, but we need your help to do this.

For those of you who have Twitter or LinkedIn, we’d love it if you could follow us and encourage others to do the same. In doing so I hope that you and others will feel more in touch with what we’re doing and saying about accessible and inclusive transport and that you’ll have a chance to shape that message.

Towards the end of 2015 we also asked you for your community transport stories. Many of you sent us brilliant and inspiring accounts of the services you provide, especially over Christmas, where we shared the incredible work that our members were doing over the holidays.

2016 marks our 30^th anniversary so it’s a perfect time to share what has made the past 30 years so special and unique: our members and the people that they serve. If you have any stories about the work you do, your dedicated drivers, committed volunteers or your inspirational passengers, then please email tom@ctauk.org. We’d love to hear from you.

It is a pleasure and a privilege to work in this sector, spending my days meeting people with big hearts who have come together to do great things: talented people who could have put their time and energy into anything they liked, but chose to channel their passion, imagination and tenacity into enriching the lives of others through delivering community transport.

2016 is going to be a big year for the CTA, and we’re thrilled to have you alongside us as we continue to advance the cause of accessible and inclusive transport across the UK.