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.
No comments:
Post a Comment