Vision
A Flourishing Community
The North Stoneham Community Group aims to nurture community in North Stoneham. North Stoneham includes North Stoneham Park, which is a new estate where being new together, particularly during a pandemic, means we recognise an existing embryonic sense of mutual support. The North Stoneham Community Group wants to embrace and extend this. Community is about ‘we’ not ‘me’. ‘We’ is only possible when people become known to each other. The aim of the North Stoneham Community Group events is to create opportunities for people in North Stoneham to get to know each other.
A community like this creates the potential for mutual support. In the context of a society and culture where national established and centralised institutions are under strain, increasingly the answers will need to be ‘local’. Developing community in North Stoneham also creates the potential for the community to be the solution to some of its challenges. The aim of developing initiatives is to provide local support and solutions from the community, for the community.
Where a community is looking at ‘we’ not ‘me’ and is empowered to provide solutions to some of the daily challenges of life, people flourish. Flourishing is about wellbeing, confidence, a sense of identity, purpose, agency the ability to make positive contribution and to have a voice. The North Stoneham Community Group, through its initiatives and relational, mutual approach, aims to give local people a voice and empower them to be the solution to some of their everyday issues and challenges.
The Language of Community Exchange
The North Stoneham Community Group do not want to exclude or label anyone. Our approach is ‘with’ rather than ‘for’ or ‘to’, which is why mutuality is one of our values. No one will be targeted because of a challenge. Instead, the language used will be of ‘exchange’, where each person gives and does what they can to help the whole, the community, the ‘we’. This community exchange will include everything from toys and Christmas jumpers to school uniform, food and skills.
A Sustainable Community
The language of exchange will help North Stoneham to become a more sustainable community. As people’s confidence and sense of agency grows, we hope they will become willing to use their skills to get involved in supporting the community and thus the events and initiatives become more sustainable. As more is exchanged in terms of food, clothes and skills, the community becomes more environmentally sustainable too.