People and Communities Creating Change
Community Roots CIC is a Gloucestershire-based social enterprise rooted in community organising. We listen, build relationships and support people to use their skills, knowledge and experience to take action on the things that matter to them.
Our work takes different forms because communities are different. We support community spaces, develop opportunities for people to volunteer, to learn and lead. We work alongside communities to understand what matters to them, we develop social enterprises that create opportunities while helping us to build a more sustainable organisation.
Community organising is the thread that connects everything we do.
Communities
We work alongside communities in different ways – through neighbourhood hubs, community food, resident-led activity, conversations, volunteering, training and partnerships - but the approach that connects them remains consistent.
Our current place-based work includes The Ewe Space in Matson and Gloucester Park Community Café, and Westgate Community Corner, but our approach is not limited to geography. We also work with communities of interest, networks and organisations brought together by shared issues or ambitions.
Food and Enterprise
Food has become an important part of our work, but it is about much more than providing food.
Our community pantries, at the Ewe Space and Westgate Community Corner, support access to affordable food while creating opportunities for volunteering, skills and connection.
Gloucester Park Community Café grew out of conversations with park users and is developing as a community enterprise. We are also involved in Gloucester Soup and Social Source, exploring how food, local enterprise and community benefit can work together.
At Westgate we are beginning to explore the next stage of our original vision: a community-led neighbourhood shop focused on everyday staples and fresh food, with a supported pantry offer for people experiencing food hardship.
Skills, volunteering, training and opportunities
People need different starting points. For some that may be joining an activity; for others it may be volunteering, practical experience, training, mentoring or taking on more responsibility.
Across our hubs, pantries, café and projects we support opportunities to learn through doing, this can lead to training and mentoring, with routes into leadership, governance and paid work when opportunities arise.
Listening and Community Organising
We are community organisers. Listening is at the heart of our approach. It helps people build relationships, identify what matters, recognise their collective power and decide what they want to do about it.
We also work with organisations that want to understand communities better, build stronger relationships and involve people meaningfully in decisions that affect them. Our support ranges from supporting the development of staff through training and mentoring, to commissioned engagement work, Community Conversations