Situated at the heart of the local voluntary and community sector since 1968, Community360 is an independent, charitable infrastructure organisation whose aim is to inspire groups to seize opportunities and become more enterprising and sustainable.
“To inspire and enable local community action to improve quality of life”.
Community360 (C360) exists to assist members of the public, voluntary and community organisations by providing passionate, intelligent leadership in Braintree, Colchester, Essex and beyond. We have a proven track record of establishing innovative ways of working to benefit public services.
Our vision is for a more equal society. Our ambition is to use our efforts and influence to reduce inequalities and increase opportunities. The values by which we work are:
- Leadership: we seek to provide passionate, intelligent leadership for our communities
- Collaboration: we maximise our impact by building partnerships to work with communities
- Honesty: we maintain a reputation for integrity and trust
- Creativity: we are open-minded, we challenge how things are done and develop new approaches
- Inclusiveness: we seek to involve everyone, are friendly and caring
- Excellence: we value quality in everything we do
Our strategic ambitions for 2020-23 are to:
- Enable – to support and empower social action
- Connect – to identify need and develop new approaches
- Support – to improve the quality of people’s lives directly
- Thrive – to ensure the sustainability of our work
Outcomes are achieved through several projects, including an experienced Community Development Team and Community Accounts Service. C360 lead on many community volunteering programmes, involving c400 volunteers through our Time Bank and Volunteer Centre projects. We also support over 300 community groups a year to access funding, embed good financial practices, recruit their own volunteers, plan and train, as well as network and promote what they do.
We manage programmes that provide fundamental, practical support to the community. Our Community Transport scheme facilitate over 50,000 trips each year and we hire out scooters and wheelchairs 5 days a week.
Our organisation is constantly evolving, anticipating opportunities in our community and seeking to maximise the impact that we can all have to make our vision a reality.