00:00Mainstone's The Kentish Lady is host to a first of its kind event on a local scale.
00:08Charities Connect 2026 brings organisers from across the borough to share ideas in a relaxed
00:18setting. An idea created by one of the staff at Five Acre Wood School.
00:26The event was inspired by wanting to bring together all our local charities. We all do such an amazing
00:32thing within the community and it was about giving opportunity for us to connect and getting to know
00:38each other and hopefully be able to collaborate. I'm hoping that everybody here today is learning a
00:45little bit more about another charity and you know they all do amazing amazing work and by everybody
00:54chatting, collaborating, connecting, they can share their own stories, they can share their own work
01:00and hopefully we're all making friends and we'll be able to support each other so that's the main
01:06aim is just to get together and do you know what we're a community. Charity leaders say events like
01:13this are vital for helping them reach out to others especially during the ongoing financial and social
01:24struggles. Well I'm here tonight just to talk to other charities and organisations just seeing where
01:30we can collaborate work together is there anything we can help them with them with us we're all looking
01:37to do the same thing helping people in the Maystone area and we just want to make a bigger difference
01:43as we can. I think I've learned that as charitable organisations we all face the same sort of problems
01:50there are you know people funding and things like that are struggling with but it's it's just that we
01:56also have a lot in common a lot more in common than perhaps lots of people realise so it's it's
02:02exciting to
02:03be in the same room or the same boat as all these organisations. After tonight's meet-up these charity
02:11gatherings could soon get a whole lot bigger. Henry Luck for KMTV in Maidstone.
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