ABOUT Us
Our Goal is to See Our Community Transformed, Connected & Revitalised
As Ashford continues to be a growth town in the South East, we have an opportunity to include and uplift everyone in our community.
Our heart at Ashford Together is to bring together; people, ideas and resources, to make life better for all.
OUR GOAL IS TO SEE OUR COMMUNITY TRANSFORMED, CONNECTED & REVITALISED
As Ashford continues to be a growth town in the South East, we have an opportunity to include and uplift everyone in our community.
Our heart at Ashford Together is to bring together; people, ideas and capital, to make life better for all.
For nearly all of us, our capabilities will grow out of and be sustained by our relationships with others. Our ability to form supportive communities, healthy families and vibrant local economies all stem from our capacity to trust and celebrate one another.
It is often said that “life is what you make of it”, but it’s tough to make anything without the right tools and ingredients. At Ashford Together, we believe that the ingredients for a good life include Joy, Love, Beauty, Friendship and Inspiration- all of which come from positive, supportive and enduring relationships with others.
Ashford Together exists to build and reinforce relationships which enable sustainable community. By creating positive spaces for co-working, co-learning, co-living and co-producing, joy; love; beauty; friendship and inspiration can flourish, making life better- community wide. We believe that it is a universal responsibility for each of us to be MAKERS of LIFE.
Scroll down for more about where Ashford Together came from.
Ashford Together's History
Ashford Together's
History
Ashford Together began in 2018 as the Charity Community and Social Action branch of Churches Together in Ashford (CTA)- a collaboration of churches in Ashford, working together to support and love the people of our town in really practical ways. Ashford Together was formed out of the success of the Ashford Churches Winter Night Shelter.
However, Ashford Winter Night Shelter was only ever designed to be a temporary solution to bigger issues, and so we wanted to expand our outreach to start to make a difference to the core of our community life in Ashford. We are starting with the homeless in our community to begin to stabilise their lives and build a future, and then extending this out to support others in need, including those at risk of homelessness- treating the root of the issue and investing in, practically and holistically supporting people before they reach crisis point.
At Ashford Together, our Christian ethos underpins everything that we do. The Bible tells us that Jesus came to earth as the Prince of “Peace”, or in Hebrew “Shalom”, which has a much richer meaning encompassing not only peace, but also harmony, wholeness, completeness, prosperity, welfare and tranquillity. In the second half of the bible, the book of John, Jesus says
“ .. I have come to give you everything in abundance, more than you expect — life in its fullness until you overflow!” (John 10:10b The Passion Translation)
Everything that Jesus did and taught us to do, is based around restoring full, loving and caring relationships, and so that’s what we are committed to doing here in Ashford.
All of our work will be delivered in partnerships with the statutory sector, faith community, voluntary sector, local businesses, and local communities. It is crucial for us to work together to achieve success in our goal of seeing the lives in our communities thrive.
MakerLife Ashford is one of Ashford Together’s biggest current projects which encapsulates a range of supportive and sustainable life skills learning. If you’d like to get involved in the future of MakerLife Ashford check out our current projects to see how you can be a part of the story.
Acknowledgements:
We have been influenced by several other initiatives and research which include the Designed to Scale publication by Lankelly Chase Foundation – this is being implemented by Participatory Cities in the London Borough Barking and Dagenham; Makerlife London which has led to our ‘co-operative’ model; the Transition Network’s work on social justice, ecology and ‘local’ communities working together; Thriving Cities Group’s extensive research on the interconnectedness of our cities, communities and economies.