Community Value Added Project

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Community Value Added Project

Courses and Training

Prototyping and Machining Service

We are pleased to inform our partners, funders, donors and participants that we have received a grant from the First Port. This grant will be utilised towards hardware and equipment purchase.

However, we are struggling to find a skilled worked to give Computer Aided Design (CAD) and machining education and mentoring support to our participants. If you can assist us in hiring, we would appreciate it.

We are thankful to Councillor Lorna Bennie and Dr Julie McFarlane for consistent support on this project.

Meet the Team

C VAP Leadership Team

Councillor Lorna Binnie

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Councillor Lorna Binnie

Lorna Binnie is an elected member for the Falkirk Council Area with her ward being Falkirk South. Keen to ensure that everybody is represented Cllr Binnie works hard for grassroots politics. Having spent significant time travelling and living in South East Asia and South Africa, bringing up a family and caring for elderly parents Cllr Binnie uses these experiences in a solution based approach to her work.

With a passion for creative writing and some published pieces around the world Cllr Binnie is fascinated by people and cultures. With a sense of humility and justice for everyone regardless of where they are in life, an ethos that mirrors our own endeavours, we are delighted to have Cllr Binnie on our board.

Morag Cassidy

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Morag Cassidy

Morag is an experienced Director with a demonstrated history of working in the civic & social organisation industry. Skilled in Social Enterprise, Bid Writing, Training Delivery, Community Engagement, and Business Development Morag is also a strong professional with a PGCE focused in Post Compulsory education from University of Central Lancashire.

Morag is Director of ‘Light on the Path’ a work placement company that seeks to not only help young professionals find the right placements to push their career further but to inspire individuals to make connections and expand their cultural understanding of diverse communities. Morag is also passionate about providing opportunities for the most vulnerable members of our society to achieve their full potential.

Morag’s exceptional experience is a huge asset to what we are trying to achieve with C-VAP and we are excited to be working together.

Dr Julie McFarlane

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Dr Julie McFarlane

Julie is an enterprise development academic living in Scotland who has spent the last 15 years developing higher education programs for students all over the world.

A former postgraduate Director for the Leadership and Organisational Performance (LOP) master suite at Heriot-Watt University, UK, and more recently, a Director of Learning at the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship (HCE) at Strathclyde University, UK, Dr McFarlane is a fellow of the UK Higher Education Authority, a University of Stirling adjunct supervisor, and a certified ICF and IAPC&M business coach.

Dr McFarlane has also successfully secured around half a million pounds in various research grants to work on knowledge transfer partnerships with SMEs in all areas of enterprise development. These projects have ranged from business model redesign to capability assessments and strategic development. We look forward to benefitting from Dr McFarlane’s wealth of experience and her guidance as we progress our project.

Dr Farrukh Makhdum

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Dr Farrukh Makhdum

Dr Farrukh Makhdum is a valued engineer with over 15 years of practical and academic experience. Dr Makhdum has a passion for Manufacturing, R&D, and Product Design. He has written extensively on these subjects and is keen that this knowledge should be shared with as many people as possible. This includes working with local communities, in a bid to engage with people who face barriers in their lives and help them to achieve their ambitions.

Dr Makhdum is the creator and his exceptional experience is the driving force for C-VAP. C-VAP is about educating people in the local community with the fundamentals of manufacturing, product design and the basics of product development. It is a ground-breaking solution to meet the needs of the future workforce and fill the ever-growing skills gap in this sector.

Operational Team

Dr Farrukh Makhdum

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Dr Farrukh Makhdum

Juli Forrest

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Juli Forrest

Juli is a business owner and experienced Business Manager in both public and private sector organisations. She works with small businesses, predominantly in the manufacturing and engineering industries and public sector organisations, by supporting them with administration, finance, marketing, and business management needs.

Juli is a fully qualified Project Manger and has worked at Board Level in a number of organisations and has been responsible for implementing business growth strategies, new operational processes and change management. Juli has a large network of other businesses who support her clients and if appropriate can draft in their expertise.

Community Engagement

Mr Syed Ashfaq Hussain Shah

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Mr Syed Ashfaq Hussain Shah

Mr Shah is a Certified Financial Accountant providing trustworthy information about financial records. He plays a strategic role by providing professional advice, aiming to maximise profitability of clients. He has more than 30 years experiance in public practice and also running his own accountancy public practice .

Being a Financial accountant Mr Shah provides professional services to clients who might be private individuals or large commercial or public sector organisations. This involves financial reporting, taxation, auditing, forensic accounting, corporate finance, business recovery and insolvency, or accounting systems and processes.

He has done exceptional extra work in the promotion and development of Pakistan and the Pakistani community in Scotland. He is involved in running social enterprises and charities and helping communities by arranging and managing fund raising events effectively and efficiently. He works very hard to resolve community issues, and has received a lot of positive feedback about his contribution.

Our Aims

- - The overarching aim of C-VAP is to bring opportunities to those who seek to work in any aspect of product development no matter their starting point
  - We aim to add value to the local community in an innovative and cost-effective way that is sustainable
  - We seek to use social media to foster and engage with all communities, sharing best practice and new ideas.

Our Values

- - To strive for every person in our community to have the chance to reach their full potential
  - We believe in looking towards new technologies to support future development and sharing that research with CAD community
  - We want to exceed all customer expectations
  - We treat all who work with us with respect and enthusiasm and acknowledge individual needs and ability.

Our Partners

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