3 ways church leaders can truly transform poverty discussions
What happens when we truly listen to voices that have been ignored? What ideas emerge, what issues are raised, and what do we learn?
This week, we are encouraging faith leaders and MPs to widen their conversations about poverty, and to do three things:
- Commit to participate only in poverty discussions that are truly inclusive, and to challenge and question the organisation of ones that are not
- Commit to organising a roundtable event on tackling poverty in their own region
- Engage with local groups with experience of poverty, and with national organisations with expertise, to help to make this successful.
Around the table in York
In September, as a prelude to Challenge Poverty Week, the Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell hosted a roundtable discussion on tackling poverty in Yorkshire, in collaboration with Church Action on Poverty.
Attendees included:
- People with experience of poverty and marginalisation in York, Sheffield, Halifax, the East Yorkshire coast, Teesside and Bradford.
- The Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, and several members of Church of England staff and clergy.
- People working in professional roles focused on tackling poverty, including from Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Church Action on Poverty
What we heard
Attendees raised and discussed a range of issues, bringing first-hand insight and ideas. Topics discussed included:
- What support would make a particular difference for families with additional needs?
- How to improve support for people who have been relocated by local authorities
- Types of positive media coverage that can help tackle poverty
- Feelings of stigma
- The lasting impact of adverse childhood experiences and/or addictions
- Above all, the need for truly inclusive approaches that ensure voices of experience are heard and heeded.
Challenge Poverty Week: a call to act
This week, as part of Challenge Poverty Week, we have sent a briefing to all MPs in the Diocese of York, and to all northern Bishops. It reports on the Yorkshire event, and encourages people to do three things listed earlier:
- Commit to participate only in poverty discussions that are truly inclusive, and to challenge and question the organisation of ones that are not
- Commit to organising a roundtable event on tackling poverty in their own region
- Engage with local groups with experience of poverty, and with national organisations with expertise, to help to make this successful.
Listen up! - A call to action
It’s easy for society to turn to the same voices again and again, but only by proactively seeking out and listening to voices of direct experience, can we gain a full understanding of any issue.
And remember, we should beware of the trap of thinking we’re “giving a voice”. People in poverty already have very effective, powerful voices – but they have often been ignored or drowned out. We don’t have a shortage of voices – we have a shortage of listeners and of people in positions of power willing to engage meaningfully.
We all have a role to play in developing more participatory approaches on poverty. Crucially, we can all commit to participate only in conversations about poverty that are inclusive and which meaningfully involve people with expertise based on experience. We should all open up conversations that we organise, and challenge others to do likewise.
We encourage Bishops, faith leaders, community leaders and politicians to do this in full partnership with organisations and people with lived experience, and to learn from good practice.
Broad and truly inclusive conversations can be transformative and can unlock impasses that often hold communities back. They can bring new issues and perspectives to the table, greatly accelerating everyone’s learning and bringing solutions closer to fruition, and enable productive processes. They can also help shift public attitudes to poverty, and build recognition of the scale of the change required.
The Yorkshire event enabled the forging of new relationships, which will foster further joint work. It also demonstrated the wealth and breadth of untapped expertise held by people with first-hand experience of poverty, including on issues that have not yet had sufficient attention.
For instance, two people spoke about having been relocated by a London local authority to West Yorkshire, and the lack of support there was around that move, and others spoke about the need of better support for families with additional needs, whether for children or adults.
We hope the Yorkshire event will inspire similar ones in other regions, and the organisations below are all on hand to help interested organisations.
6 organisations with participation expertise
- APLE Collective, which supports groups across the country led by people with experiences of poverty.
- Poverty Truth Network, a network of people involved in and interested in setting up Poverty Truth Commissions.
- Poverty2Solutions, an alliance of organisations with a focus on delivering change on poverty, and demonstrating the value of including the expertise of experience in policy-making discussions.
- Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which has a focus on increasing and supporting participatory projects.
- Church Action on Poverty, which has long focused on supporting people with experiences of poverty to be at the forefront of change-making processes.
- ATD Fourth World UK, which pioneers the involvement of people in poverty in policy debates and in research.
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