Community Hubs
At TNT, we firmly believe that churches can be vibrant hubs at the centre of communities, offering local people a range of activities and services beyond a place to worship.
You can read on our website how we support churches to host Places of Welcome where all people feel safe to connect, belong and contribute. In some cases though, churches and faith based charities have gone one step further and looked to establish community hubs that bring together in one building a range of services to meet the needs and release the assets of the local community.
These hubs tend to bring together churches with local voluntary sector and community projects. They work closely with local communities, understanding the issues that impact these specific neighbourhoods, and finding practical ways of responding to poverty, injustice and inequality – offering a range of services including food support, adult education, job training and debt advice.
You may recall following the publication of Nigel Adams’ new book “Communities of Hope” that TNT launched a new programme to support existing community hubs and enable more Places of Welcome to become community hubs – so we can enable the church to grow this work and we can support more people through grass-roots community-based services. You can buy a copy of Nigel's book from us (if you're local), from Eden bookshop online or Amazon.
This new programme complements the work the County Council is doing to establish a Family Hub Network and we are keen our church based community hubs can become part of the family hub network in these local areas.
We are therefore delighted that the County Council has granted us £2,010 from their Local Communities Fund to enable us to offer tailored mentoring and coaching for 4 project leaders in Ashfield, Kirkby, Mansfield and Gedling to enable us to get this work off the ground.