Always on
This project successfully funded on 21st April 2025, you can still support them with a donation.
A Space To Start in Waltham Forest
London, England, United Kingdom
Aim
Help us open our first community therapeutic space in Waltham Forest. A warm room for parents, carers and children to gather and be heard.
About Where We Start
Where We Start is a not-for-profit community interest company (CIC) based in Waltham Forest. Every penny raised goes back into the work. There are no shareholders, no private profit, just community-rooted support for parents, carers, and children.
We were founded on a simple idea: that the difficulties children and families face are not individual problems to be fixed. They grow out of the conditions we live in. The pressures, the isolation, the shrinking number of places where parents and carers can simply be together without being judged, assessed, or rushed.
We exist to offer something different. Not a clinic, not a service that treats families as cases, but a community-rooted space where lived experience is taken seriously and where support is built around what people actually need.
What the first space will be
Our first therapeutic space will host parent and carer groups, with room to grow into work alongside children and young people as we build. It's a room, but more than that, it's a starting point. Somewhere local families can come, talk, listen, and find that they're not alone in what they're carrying.
Where your money will go
The £5,000 we're raising covers the practical costs of getting the room open and usable:
- Deposit and initial hire for the space, so we can secure regular sessions and plan ahead with confidence
- Equipment and furnishings including comfortable seating, art and group materials, storage, and the things that turn an empty room into somewhere people want to come back to.
- Set-up and admin costs including insurance, basic materials, printing, and the small but real costs of running a young community organisation
Every line of this budget is about making the room ready for the first families who walk through the door. We want them to find something already there for them, not a space we're still building around them.
Why now
We're a small organisation at an early stage, and we're choosing to grow slowly and carefully, with the community rather than for it. Your contribution, however small, helps us put down roots in Waltham Forest and start the work properly. It also tells us that the idea behind Where We Start is one people believe in.
Funding method
Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made