About Us

Whole Community Works (WCW) is a charity that brings people of faith and goodwill together to promote community-focused regeneration in North Kent.

Decades of decline left our area struggling to cope with the economic, social and environmental legacies of its industrial past. But now, North Kent is undergoing rapid change on a huge scale. As part of Europe’s largest regeneration project - the Thames Gateway - vast areas of derelict industrial ‘brownfield’ land are being re-developed, and a major new business location is planned around the international station at Ebbsfleet.

Our big concern is that, amidst all this physical renewal, much more needs to be done to help people feel a part of it all, and to prevent the disadvantaged being left behind.

We believe that the various faith communities, by working together and with others, can be a powerful force in helping old and new communities to voice their stories, build understanding, forge common bonds, and embrace new arrivals. It was this idea that gave the charity its original name of ‘Faith in Their Voices’ - often shortened to ‘FIT Voices’. Over the past decade, the charity has worked with several local groups to help turn their ideas into practical Projects.

For a more detailed account of what has inspired the growth of the charity’s work, see A Founder's Story.

In 2008, we started on our biggest project to date – the The Old Town Hall in Gravesend. With the building now open, this new chapter in our story also marks a step-change in our ambition. We are increasingly looking to engage with community groups and voluntary, public and private sector agencies to identify emerging issues and needs. We then look to respond by brokering partnerships and/or developing and managing projects that allow communities to work together, foster learning and understanding, and promote inclusion. This also involves commissioning research to inform fresh projects, and we are now working to establish a Faith Observatory for North Kent.

To give a better idea of what we do, we changed the name to Whole Community Works in October 2009; but the underlying idea remains the same - that everyone should feel part of things and that, by working together, people of faith and goodwill can help make that happen.

The charity’s board of Trustees includes people of North Kent’s main faiths and none and, while the main focus of our work is in Dartford and Gravesham, we are happy to work with people across North Kent and beyond.