About Communigrow
Communigrow is a partnership between East Malling Research and Joining Hands.  East Malling Research have kindly allocated one acre of land to Joining Hands, a social enterprise working in Kent, to create a community growing project for the benefit of young people and families interested in growing their own produce.

The aims of the project are:

learning about the process of growing

experiencing outdoor activities which promote health

gaining communication skills

learning to plan, manage and deliver projects

working together to achieve common goals

gaining knowledge of enterprise

adopting healthy eating and living habits

We would like to work with schools and youth projects in and out of the area to widen participation and involvement opportunities.

For more information about the project please contact:

Joining Hands
1st Floor, International House
Dover Place
Ashford
Kent TN23 1HU
Tel: 0800 6123328/01233 879284

Email: info@joininghandskent.co.uk

Since starting work with joining Hands I have been on a handful of day courses,
the most recent being a Young People and Money course.  In the future I am sure
this course will be invaluable in helping young people in their day to day
struggles.

Right now I am involved in some joint projects, one of them being an
Intergenerational project.  We are right now gathering elderly people who would
like to take part in this excellent opportunity to ‘mingle’ with the younger
generation hopefully allowing them to both learn a little more about the
other.  So far, the response is very positive and we have a number of elderly
people lining up to join the project and we are currently recruiting young
people to take part. I am very much looking forward to our first outing to get
to know everyone at Port Lympne Zoo!

I am also in the middle of researching my own more personal project which is a
Fashion Photography workshop. Here I aim to deliver a fourteen week course on
how to organise and complete a fashion photo-shoot. The course will include a
make-up and hair master-class as well as a basic photography lesson and will
end with a presentation of the participants finished photographs. I am very
much looking forward to delivering this course and right now am researching
like never before to get this course ‘out there’ as soon as possible!

There is a lot to come from us here at Joining Hands and I know  we are going to
make an impact out there in the world, I am grateful  that I have been able to
take part in it all.

We are now less than one month away from the Auction of Promises event on the 6^th of November and things are slowly coming together. We are still receiving some donations but are on the look out for more to make sure the event is really special. The Joining Hands team has been busy with the task of selling both tickets for the event and raffle tickets as well as doing our best to promote the event.

The team is going on some courses in the near future to enable us to provide more services and to improve on the work Joining Hands does. In the next two weeks we are seeing a specialist to help us with Tendering and two members of the team will be undertaking a course to help young people with financial advice.

We will be in the Chequers Centre in Maidstone on the 20^th of October to advertise what we do and to do some research into what services are wanted by the community; it will also give us an opportunity network with other organizations. Feel free to pop in and meet some of the team.

If you are interested in raffle tickets for prizes including a HD TV and a ride in a Hot Air Balloon or in attending the Auction of Promises please call us on 0800 612 3328 or email info@joininghandskent.co.uk.

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