With residents reporting the lowest level of community cohesion in Lambeth, Stockwell Partnership and Alert aim to build the capacity of community groups to collectively address some of the major tensions and divisions in the area. We focus on building the capacity of associations representing marginalised groups – including the newly-created Women’s Association of Tigray (a predominantly Christian group), the Muslim Women’s Group, the Special Educational Needs (SEN) Families group, and Stockwell Women’s Achievement Network (SWAN).
We work with these groups to strengthen confidence and capacity through social and recreational activities (e.g. walks, outings) and through appropriate training (e.g. ESOL and mother tongue classes,; sewing, childcare, and IT training) and other skills development. Sharing access to these services enables initial relationships and trust to be formed. This relationship- building phase will be followed by a comprehensive, participatory analysis process with selected leaders in 2012. These leaders will ultimately facilitate a process of visioning ‘the Stockwell we want’, communicating this vision to higher level policy makers as the work progresses.