Kent Equality Cohesion Council came into being in April – previously we were called the North West Kent Racial Equality Council.

 The change in name reflects how our work has evolved over the years. When I started in 1999, my work was mainly with BME (black minority ethnic) communities, we tended to work in isolation, and there wasn’t much work taking place with young people and women.

Over time, with the support of the now retired director Dev Sharma MBE, we started to push back the boundaries and evolve our work.

To me, community cohesion is about all sections of the community coming together for the common good, sharing their history, knowledge and values.

In Kent, we have worked hard with limited resources to ensure all sections of the community are engaged and have an opportunity to participate. We organise one of the biggest – if not the biggest – St George’s Day celebrations, which actually takes place on April 23, where young people from all sections of the community come together to celebrate the patron saint of England.

When I first mooted the idea, I was told not to bother, that it would upset people and attract extreme groups.

Four years down the line, people can see the benefit of bringing communities together and I am keen to replicate this work in other parts of the county. 

We take the same approach with the Vaisakhi Festival in Gravesham. Vaisakhi is a Sikh religious festival which celebrates the birth of the Sikh faith as it is practised today.

Over time, with the hard work put in by the Guru Nanak Darbar Gurdwara (Sikh temple) and local community groups, we have evolved this event so it is not just a celebration for Sikhs but the whole community – with local schools and non-Sikh community groups getting involved.

Not that our work is limited to Gravesham. We organise three major festivals – known as melas – in Dartford, Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells.  The term ‘mela’ comes from the Indian sub-continent and means a fair or festival. If you go to most parts of the UK, melas tend to promote and celebrate the arts and culture of the sub-continent. 

The way we have evolved melas in Kent is by making them a celebration of communities and diversity in the particular area where they are taking place. 

In addition to our work through the arts to promote cohesion, we also organise – in partnership with community groups – events to promote understanding and to discuss issues. 

Examples include the series of Understanding Islam events organised with the Gravesend and Dartford Muslim Association; and the conferences organised in partnership with Rethink around mental health, forced marriages and domestic abuse; and the work with Kent Police around lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) issues, hate crime, stop and search and preventing violent extremism.

All of this I believe contributes to the positive community relations that are enjoyed in Kent, on the whole.

There is a real danger, though, in the current economic climate, as spending cuts take hold, that the work we and other charities around the county do will be under threat. This year already we have had to make staffing cuts and cut budgets back so drastically that there is nothing left to cut.

We are relying more on volunteers than ever before and seem to be working so hard just to survive. The long-term consequence of this is that organisations such as ours will fold and the work will just stop. 

Building up community cohesion and good relations doesn’t just happen by accident, it involves building effective partnerships between the community and statutory sector and most importantly time, commitment and community buy in.

I hope that over the coming months and years Kent can continue to be a role model for the rest of the country.

• Gurvinder Sandher is director of the Kent Equality Cohesion Council.

I fully sympathise and agree with what you have written.  Having spent over 12 years liaing with Kent Police on LGBT equality issues, and helping KCC and Kent Fire Service with such issues to help improve relations and stop hate crimes, the cuts proposals by the Coalition could well threaten much of this if staff and community officers etc are lost through job losses.

Many private sector firms could also lose out out as they depend of contracts from public bodies.  It's all largely unnecessary anyway, as investing in such as the Green New Deal, to creat possibly up to 1 million jobs, cancelling Trident missile renewal to facilitate this, could head off any need for draconian cuts.   They say the deficit must be tackled (caused not by ordinary people anyway, but the bankers etc) and point to Canad or Ireland. But Canada's was before the current recession and Ireland, which did drastcially cut it's public sector, is now called an economic basketcase by the very same bond markets the government 'threatens' us with if they don't cut !

Thus if the cuts go ahead not only will the same as Ireland happen, but it will also well undermine community cohesion and work both in the voluntary sector and within businesses to stop attacks on minority groups.   There are already increased reports of attacks on LGBT people around the Country alongside the threats from far-right groups like the EDL .

However, despite the sadly likely cuts it will remain vital for community groups like the posters to keep going somehow.  Making common cause with political Parties, Unions and others will need to  happen and soon.  I recommend also taking up veteran politco Tony Benn's recent call in the Guardian for a broad co-alition of such to oppose the government's plans.   I'd add that the Lib Dem leadership should be pressed hard to pull out of this appalling co-alition now and join the opposition.

Gurvinder has got it right. Short term cuts can cause long term consequences and the area of community cohesion is not one where we can afford to go backwards. The work done by the REC in North West Kent is outstanding. As the County Councillor for Northfleet and Gravesend West,which is the area with the largest number of BME residents in the South East outside London, I have seen community cohesion in action and it certainly works in Gravesham. If I can do anything to assist in resisting cuts to the budget please let me know.