The Open Door Community Foundation has grown from, and is developing further, the pioneering community-building work of Hodge Hill Church, which has been recognised nationally (see e.g. Paul Bickley, ‘Good Neighbours: How Churches Help Communities Flourish’ [Church Urban Fund / Theos, June 2014], ‘Transforming Community Engagement’ [Resourcing Mission Bulletin, Jan 2013] and www.cuf.org.uk).
We seek to make a distinctive and significant contribution to the wellbeing of people in our neighbourhoods through:
- Contributing to the nurturing and sustaining of places of welcome and hospitality, and relationships of trust and friendship
- Unlocking and connecting local people’s passions, knowledge and skills
- Working with people to help them overcome barriers to them making confident contributions within their neighbourhood
- Being a ‘seedbed’ for innovative forms of local, associational life
We also seek to work, in collaboration with partner organisations, to nurture a wider learning community of neighbourhoods and faith communities, growing relationships of mutual learning and support to enable locally-rooted initiatives to incubate and develop.
We work using the principles and practices of Asset-Based Community Development, also known as ABCD.
“Without community, there can be no liberation”. Audre Lorde
We take an intentional approach in all our work which:
- is local neighbourhood focused
- is ‘bottom-up’ and asset-based
- is holistic, or ‘ecological’, in relation to both people and neighbourhoods
- is relational, mutual and ‘co-produced’
- is inclusive of all local people, seeking to break down barriers which divide and ‘label’ people
- challenges inequalities of power and value, seeking justice, especially for the most marginalised in society
- embraces messiness and complexity as inevitable and valuable
- is constantly learning and critically reflecting
- positively values the traditions of people of faith, and seeks to nurture the social, physical, emotional, intellectual, occupational and spiritual wellbeing of all (see right)