Our Brent
This Is Brent. This Is Us.
We are not consultants who studied Brent from a distance. We are not researchers who read about it in a report. We are Brent. We have lived here, raised our children here, and watched our neighbours’ children grow up alongside our own.
The community we know, love and fight for
A borough shaped by people, culture and resilience.
Brent is one of the most diverse places on earth. Over 140 languages are spoken in our schools. We have Irish families who arrived in the 1940s, Caribbean families who came on the Windrush, Asian families who made Brent their home in the 1960s and 70s, and Somali, Brazilian, Chinese, Italian and Romanian communities who have joined us more recently.
This is not just diversity on a spreadsheet. This is the fabric of our daily lives. It is what we hear in the playground, what we smell cooking in the kitchens of our neighbours, and what we celebrate at our community events.
And we are proud of it.
42%
Child poverty in Brent
140+
Languages in Brent schools
1 in 3
Below poverty line after housing
The reality we live
Pride does not mean pretending everything is fine.
We know the realities of Brent because we live them. Too many families in our community are struggling. Child poverty in Brent stands at 42% significantly higher than the London average of 31% and more than double the England average of 21%. One in three people in Brent live below the poverty line after housing costs.
Neighbourhoods like Stonebridge, Roundwood, Harlesden, Kensal Green, Dollis Hill and Welsh Harp experience particularly acute disadvantage. These are not statistics to us. These are the streets we walk. These are the families we know. These are the children our children went to school with.
What this means for young people
They are not problems to be solved. They are potential waiting to be unlocked.
When families struggle, young people feel it. They see the stress on their parents’ faces. They go without things their peers take for granted. They grow up knowing that the odds are stacked against them and too many of them are written off before they have even had a chance.
But Brent’s young people are brilliant. They are resilient. They are navigating multiple cultures, multiple languages and multiple identities and they are doing it with a strength that most people will never understand.
The problem with outsiders
For too long, people outside Brent have spoken on our behalf.
They have written reports about us, designed programmes for us, and decided what is best for us — without ever asking us what we actually need. They have seen deprivation and called it a deficit. They have seen diversity and called it a challenge.
We are done with that.
We do not need anyone to speak for us. We can raise our own voice. We know what works because we have seen it work. We know what does not work because we have watched it fail our children. And we are done waiting for someone else to fix things.
“If we do not do this, who will?”
That is why Cavacoe exists. Not because someone told us we needed a youth centre. Because we looked at our community, at our young people, and we knew something different had to be built.
Something rooted in the reality of life in Brent. Something designed by people who actually understand what our young people are going through. Something that does not treat our community as a problem to be fixed, but as a source of strength to be nurtured.
Because Brent does not need saving. Brent needs investing in.
Our story continues
This is our home. This is our story. And we are the solution.
Cavacoe is building from the community outward — rooted in Brent, shaped by lived experience, and focused on unlocking what already exists here.