Watford & Three Rivers Trust has been at the heart of community activity since 1974 and has played a significant part in the development of local voluntary services. 

Our Vision 

Our vision is of a community in which people are connected, informed and take responsibility for the wellbeing of themselves and others. 

Our Purpose 

Our purpose is to promote, support and deliver activities that strengthen the local community. 

We aim to: 

• Ensure that our community benefits from voluntary organisations that are welcoming, effective, sustainable and accountable; 
• Help older and vulnerable people to build social networks and design and secure services appropriate to their needs; and
• Encourage and support people to be active in their communities for the wellbeing of themselves and others. 

What we believe 

Volunteering and a good public spirit are at the heart of every successful community and every contented individual. We’ve worked for over forty years to ensure that our vibrant and diverse community benefits from voluntary groups that are welcoming, effective, accountable and sustainable, and to ensure that people can contribute to the design and delivery of the services on which they rely. 

What we do 

We run the Community and Voluntary Service (CVS) service supporting charities across Watford and the Three Rivers Trust Area with fundraising and governance. This work is funded by the Watford Borough Council and Three Rivers Trust District Council.  

Our Dragon’s Apprentice Challenge has raised over £100k for Watford charities, every week we provide activities and contacts for 200 older people, each month we complete around 200 interventions to help vulnerable people living at home, each year our volunteer drivers complete around 20,000 miles taking people to urgent appointments, we manage two community centres hosting 2,500 community activities each year, and we lead a partnership aimed at supporting 14,000 people a year to relieve pressures on the NHS and adult care services. 

Core values 

Partnership 

We believe communities and organisations gain most when people collaborate to achieve shared goals - therefore we will work to establish effective partnerships with organisations sharing similar values and aims. We work to establish effective partnerships with organisations sharing similar values and aims. We work with stakeholders and partners to strengthen or improve our services, or to make them more accessible or more sustainable.  

We will continue to play a distinctive role in local relationships and seek out new partnership opportunities within Watford, across Hertfordshire, regionally, nationally and internationally. We will review partnerships to ensure that each has a purpose and generates benefits for ourselves, our stakeholders or members of the local community. 

Accountability 

We believe that community and public services are best provided by voluntary organisations accountable to the communities they serve - therefore we work for goods and services to be provided by organisations embedded within the community they serve. We ensure that W3RT’s Board members are recruited locally, are drawn from different sectors, and reflect the diversity of our local community. In purchasing services, we favour other such groups where possible. Acting alone and through networks, W3RT encourages others, including statutory commissioners, to recognise the value of developing a strong locally-accountable voluntary sector. In bidding to deliver services, we seek consortia or partnership arrangements with similar groups. Where W3RT is not itself bidding, we encourage and support other organisations and consortia so that services are more likely to be delivered by locally governed charities or community groups. 

Voluntarism 

We believe that a strong and diverse voluntary sector is a distinctive and necessary feature of a successful democratic society - therefore we will champion and support the voluntary sector, volunteering, and positive community action. We will support groups to be sustainable and to retain their local accountability, character and independence.  

We ensure that volunteering opportunities are available within each of our own activities. We promote good practice in volunteering and will initiate and support local campaigns or activities that encourage volunteering. We seek to promote volunteering in schools, colleges, businesses, and seek solutions for supported volunteering. Where possible, we will offer a volunteering partnership agreement to allow motivated individuals and groups to work under the auspices of W3RT. We will support independent new groups with model documents where needed. 

Engagement 

We believe that people should be actively involved in shaping the community in which they live and the services that they use - therefore we support service users (including W3RT service users) to be better engaged in the planning, design and delivery of services. Each of our primary services will have a dedicated website. For each of our services, we produce a statement of the standards and values that our service will seek to meet. We will make this statement available to all service users and to partners.  

We encourage discussion and listen to feedback to improve our standards and services. We encourage and facilitate user groups to help us improve our services. We support users of other services to help them to influence the design and delivery of those services. Without preference for any political party or policy, we encourage individuals to participate in consultations and forums and engage with political processes including elections.  

In particular, we work with individuals or groups that feel marginalised, disempowered or excluded and support them to find an appropriate voice. We encourage political and social dialogue on all themes and issues and will not exclude views or discussions except where required by law to do so.