Our Mission
…to create inclusive, resilient communities that can support mental, emotional and physical health and wellbeing for everyone.
Community – people with Common Unity – experiential, geographical, social, cultural, systemic.
We are a Values-led Organisation:
• INCLUSION: ensuring inclusion of marginalised people, supporting their autonomy, raising expectations and access to opportunities for work, leisure, belonging and health
• SUSTAINABILITY: developing knowledge and understanding of social, climate and natural environment issues, strengthening resilience of people and our local communities
• EMPOWERMENT: advocating for people and communities, facilitating them to become more enabled, empowered and have a confident voice in their local and global community.
Aiming to address and challenge marginalisation at individual, community, and societal level through amplifying grassroots voices, influencing and facilitating change to systems of public funding and service contracts in order to create better outcomes for people and communities. Our objectives are to:
- Focus on younger people, with residentials, activities, workshops, learning, volunteering and work opportunities, that improve long-term mental health and wellbeing for young people.
- Offer a physical location to develop and maintain friendships, connect with support and expertise, access resources, and access peer support, be active citizens.
- Respond to people’s specific needs and asks within a safe, supportive environment in which people develop confidence and independence, raise self-esteem and expectations.
- Actively seek collaboration and partnership working with groups, organisations and influencers from across Gloucestershire, to improve, consolidate and share best practice for all young people in the county.
Aiming to respond to the needs of all young people, modelling best practice in our place-based hub, and multiple opportunities to access resources, connections, support, advocacy and representation, towards better mental, emotional and physical health and wellbeing and life chances. Our objectives are to:
- Actively seek collaboration and partnership working to address issues at individual, community and societal level, and find solutions that meet existing and emerging needs for people and communities.
- Bridge the cultural, trust and understanding gaps between the community sector and public bodies, and major funders, more effective partnerships, transactions and collaborations.
- Establish better procedure and practice for those partnerships, where existing systems unfairly burden the community sector with financial, capacity, individual health and legal risks .
- Explore opportunities for strategic thinking and co-production within the community sector, where this will create lasting partnerships, more community wealth, and stronger, more resilient communities.
Aiming to respond to the needs of all young people, modelling best practice in our place-based hub, and multiple opportunities to access resources, connections, support, advocacy and representation, towards better mental, emotional and physical health and wellbeing and life chances. Our objectives are to:
- Co-production with people and communities for whom the work is focused on.
- Asset-based and community-led community development – those who need it inform it and can access it.
- Participants are equal stakeholders along with us and the funder, and have an equal say in what happens.
- Place-based facilitation, not service provision.
- Partnership working to achieve sustainability and sharing of best practice models.
- Creative approaches, seeing opportunities for innovation rather than problems.
- Take risks to create change, being comfortable with doing things differently.
We are committed to being both internally and externally:
- Inclusive – valuing inclusion equality and co-production to build our community and our team.
- Democratic – we recognise both self-agency and the need for formal communication and clear decision-making processes.
- Supportive – we support people to develop autonomy through empathy and kindness.
- Sustainability allies – it is entwined into all we do.
- Change makers – seizing opportunities to challenge existing practices to bring about change.
- Creative – we are a thinking, learning, responsive organisation on a journey of innovation, exploration and risk taking.