An open letter to Thanet’s community

Dear Friends, 

I’m writing to you today with a heavy heart and a hopeful mind. 

We’d like to thank everyone who was able to join and support us last Sunday (07/07/2024), celebrating a year of registering as a CIC, and raising funds for our Spacehive campaign aiming to provide a year of guaranteed support for local Neurodivergent folks. We are deeply appreciative and grateful for all the local artists and businesses who donated to our raffle, and community members and councillors who were able to attend the event.

With the key objective to raise significant funds for our crowdfunder, I’m devastated to share that we didn’t manage to meet our aim to raise much more during this event, raising £238.50. I feel deflated at the fact it is so hard for us to raise more money. Yet, I am not surprised. 

One of the key reasons I always said we would have ‘free events for all, forever’ as an ethos was to break the barrier to accessing support for our community. A wide majority of Neurodivergent adults financially struggle due to difficulties in maintaining employment because most workplaces are still inaccessible to Neurodivergent people.

So, it was always a difficult decision to start a crowdfunder because we didn’t want to ask for money from our community. We didn’t want them to fund the support they are receiving from our work, as it would be against our ethos of doing it for free and breaking the financial barriers to accessing support. However, some people in our community had said they wanted to donate if they could and we were hoping to unite the wider local community to support us, like it often comes together to support many other local causes and organisations.

With almost a fourth of the population in Thanet being disabled (and that’s only those known and considered as such by the council), and Thanet being one of the most deprived areas in England, the prevalence of neurodivergence in our area is extremely high. Between those who already know they are Neurodivergent, those who are figuring it out, and those who haven’t figured it out yet due to historical misdiagnosis (it’s only very recently that we started to understand neurodivergence at all, so many generations were missed). Every citizen in Thanet knows at least one Neurodivergent person. 

We were hoping the wider community would want to support us so they can support their family members, their neighbours, their colleagues, their friends, anyone who might benefit from the work that we do. But as I said, Thanet is one of the most deprived areas of England. It makes sense that it is going to be hard to crowdfund. And yet we have seen so many be successful already; we had hope.

We were delighted to be successful with our Crowdfund Kent application and that KCC and NHS Kent backed the campaign. This is testimony to the fact they can see the need and value of the work that we do. But we have a really big chunk of our target still to achieve and not long to do it in. Time is running out.

So where does that leave us? Are we really going to be unsuccessful? 

The Spacehive campaign is an all-or-nothing kind of deal. We are either able to raise the funds, or we lose everything. Are we really going to lose 60% of our goal because we couldn’t raise the last 40%? I don’t believe it. I simply don’t believe it because I’ve known from the start of Neurodivergent Friends that it would go far. 

Since the first meetup I organised completely DIY on my own, and feeling in my core the energetic feedback I was getting from people – that they too, like me, felt like they had finally found a space where they can simply be. Belong. Be accepted. Be understood. A home. Since that day, I’ve had such a strong gut feeling that NDFT would become something much bigger than myself. Something that people can truly claim as theirs. A true sense of community support, healing, and belonging.

Yes, Neurodivergent Friends is for Neurodivergent people. But the work we do has an invisible ripple effect that’s much greater and goes much farther than just the Neurodivergent community. For Neurodivergent people to thrive, you need at least two things: self-acceptance and acceptance from others, i.e., non-NDs. As much as it may look like our main work is about self-acceptance, there is an incredible amount of invisible work that supports acceptance. When we set up a venue and explain all the things we need to know or do to create an accessible space, people running that venue learn from us. When they see us interact with each other, they learn from us. When we interact with them, affirming our and their needs, they learn from us.

One thing I am certain of is that you cannot support someone with something you would shame yourself for. And we are constantly reminded of that harsh reality: there is still a lot of internalised ableism in our Neurodivergent and wider local community. Because it’s not ‘cool’ to be disabled.

But another thing I am certain of is that you can’t shame or guilt yourself to heal. We need  someone to show us radical acceptance, compassion, and empathy – that it is okay to be who we are – that our experience and our reality is valid, and that we deserve our needs to be met, no matter what they are. That makes a difference. If someone shows you that you are enough just as you are, so you can give that to yourself, then in turn you can give that to others, it matters. 

This is what we do. 

We are learning and growing together, dismantling our internalised ableism and normalising self-acceptance. Our work is important because not only does it heal our Neurodivergent community, but it supports the healing of our wider community. 

It takes time. It takes effort. It takes frustration. It takes hard work. It takes an ocean of patience. But it is happening. There are millions of ripple effects from the work we do on our wider community. From people attending our events being able to continue to simply survive everyday life, to the staff member of a venue witnessing how we run an event and taking mental notes to implement tiny changes that will make a huge difference to the customer service experience they provide (and it will be beneficial to both ND and non-NDs alike!). From our members becoming increasingly confident to get out there more than they ever thought they could, and becoming active participants in our local life and economy. 

To their friends, neighbours, or family who are learning alongside them to better care for themselves and one another, creating a forever kinder, more accepting and inclusive Thanet… Our work goes far beyond just the local Neurodivergent community.

Yes, I AGREE WITH YOU: WE, the people, shouldn’t have to be the ones funding such work. And believe me, we are going after every bit of grant funding we can. But the reality is, we are still a very young organisation. We are all Neurodivergent. There are only three of us behind the scenes, and NDFT is not yet a full-time thing for any of us: two of us have other jobs and the other is a full-time carer. We do not get paid for anywhere near all the hours we put in. And I have no shame and all pride to say that considering this, we are doing incredibly well. But it’s not enough. We need more capacity. We need more staff so we can keep growing. It takes time. And we don’t want to have to choose between supporting our community with the direct work we do (our events for Neurodivergent people) and finding more money. Because we know that for a lot of people, attending our events is a lifeline. There is no world in which we want to close down this lifeline for those who need it when there’s nothing else like what we do for them to turn to.

We urge anyone who has the means to donate, i.e., this will not impact your ability to pay your bills or buy food, to help us. We urge local businesses who are doing well to support us, whether through direct donations or via our corporate sponsorship scheme. We urge anyone with any kind of influence to help us raise awareness. We urge all our supporters to help us keep raising awareness about the campaign by sharing it with those you haven’t shared it with yet and ask them to donate.

Thanet, my sweet Thanet. We are learning together. And for me today, it is clear that crowdfunding for the work we do is not the right avenue for us, nor is it fair on our community considering the barriers it faces that we are trying to break. But prove me right one more time, like you did two years ago when we started… Thanet, we need you. I’m so grateful that I get to live in an area with so many incredible people and communities who are committed to creating a kinder, softer, and more accepting world starting with our local area. It is a privilege I am never taking for granted, and we want to continue to work hard to grow with you all.

Lux – Lucie Chiocchetti, founder and co-director at Neurodivergent Friends in Thanet.