Thursday, 17 November 2011

FGM meeting in Barnet - 11am 28.11.11

Flourishing Consulting Limited are delighted to be supporting 28TooMany - an organisation lead by Ann-Marie Wilson with the aim of eradicating FGM.

As part of Barnet Council's Safeguarding Month we are delighted to be holding a meeting in their offices, to draw together professionals from different organisations to explore the scope for working together co-operatively on this issue.

Front-line professionals are welcome to join us, as well as those from voluntary and community organisations.

Contact annmarie@28toomany.org or karen@flourishing.me.uk to book your place.

The meeting takes place at 11am on 28th November 2011 - in Building 4 of the North London Business Park in Barnet.

There will be speakers from Imkaan, 28TooMany and we hope to welcome a speaker from the Home Office as well.

Social Action and Social Innovation Conference


On 14th and 15th November I attended a 2 day conference at Lambeth Palace - hosted by Faiths Forum for London.

The focus was on the role of faith groups in delivering social action projects. Speakers from around the world talked of their work - from challenging attitudes to disability amongst Arab communities in Israel, to the 2011 Hours Against Hate campaign presented by members of the US State Department.

One of the lasting thoughts for me is around the economic imperatives to understand other faiths and cultures. There is little that can be described as good about the current economic crisis - but in Italy there is some evidence that SME's are taking a broader view of the marketplace for their products and services, and actively seeking to understand ways in which they can deliver these sensitively and appropriately across different faith groups.

There were lively break out sessions in which we sought to define social action - and to explore where single faith or multi-faith responses might be most relevant. For the most part we agreed that furtherance of a religion lent itself to single faith action, and there were discussions around delivery of projects where faiths held strong views - LGBT is the most obvious area.

It was great to be able to speak about Faithbook (www.thefaithbook.co.uk) and also the Barnet Community Project's youth skatepark - as an inter-faith resource and social action project respectively. In particular, exploring more socially enterprising ways of delivering social action.

The Director for the Big Lottery Fund spoke of their role in supporting projects - and Baroness Warsi committed to looking at the criteria for the Social Action Fund, which currently excludes faith organisations.

My particular point is that giving money to a project is not sufficient. Some form of advice and support is needed to enable projects to eke the money out. Intelligent funders engage more in the development of the projects that they fund - and in some instances provide people and skills alongside money.

Overall a very good investment of time - with lots of thought provoking discussions.