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At New Hope we are committed to the idea of community!
The sense of community has diminished in towns across the country as we spend more time behind our closed front doors and because there is nowhere to easily and comfortably meet your neighbours. We want to help change that.
To transform and develop community we need both physical facilities - a ‘place’ - and change agents - ‘people’. The ‘place’ can include a community hall, meeting rooms, a cafe. The ‘people’ can be providing community services, a listening ear, a cup of tea and a biscuit.
New Hope Limited can provide the ‘place’ - it could be an old redundant church, or a derelict plot of land in the centre of a housing area, or part of a new housing development.
The best ‘people’ to build community are the people who live locally. The best people at building community tend to be members of a faith tradition. New Hope comes out of the Christian tradition and we believe that followers of Jesus Christ have a demonstrably strong history of community work and social care.
Our strategy for transforming and building community is therefore to provide the physical ‘place’ and to partner with a local vibrant Christian Church to provide the ‘people’. Not people who come in from outside to ‘do good’ but members of the local community voluntarily working for the good of the community.
This strategy works! New Hope have already built a centre in York Road in Reading where, in partnership with the New Hope Community Church, renewed community spirit and vigour has been developed. See our “York Road” page for more details.
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