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Listening…

Watching birds in the park helps Self-Reliant Group facilitator, Laura Walton, listen to God.

Many Christians hear God speaking to them in an audible voice, giving them guidance, comforting them, reminding them that they are not alone. Others ‘hear’ God’s voice when they read the Bible and know that a particular verse is for them in their own unique set of circumstances. I believe God speaks in many ways just as a parent finds different ways of teaching their child the ropes of life. I almost never go to my local parks without seeing God’s hand and knowing I’ve been shown something relevant to my life or to a situation. I realise how important the natural environment is to my faith.
 
Yesterday my walk in the park gave me a completely new and amazing experience. I met two baby thrush, spotty chested, short, fat and fluffy around the edges. They were at ground level looking up at me…..with interest, without fear. The Mother was close by, demonstrating the foraging for food lesson and crossly prompted them to keep focused on the task. Because she was there, they had no fear of me and began again to imitate their Mum, hopping a couple of steps away from me.
 
Fear can be paralysing. It can stop us moving forward. It can cause us to retreat. It can create barriers which seem to be insurmountable and it can disguise itself in so many valid reasons which deter us from even trying.
 
We have become lockdown experts here in the NW. We are lockdown graduates. We have survived, we’ve come through. As restrictions are eased yet again, our daily schedules face change and our watches have come back into use. Our calendars come alive with possibilities and doorbells pave the way to back garden reunions. The roads take longer to cross and the pavements no longer seem so wide.
 
But actually the long straggly hair gets tied up quite neatly and the nails aren’t long enough to paint. The supermarket birthday cards are familiar and easily accessible and stories on the news of charity shops being restocked during the day because they are so busy are reason enough to stick to wearing what we’re comfortable in.
 
As our Self Reliant groups begin to make plans to meet in parks or gardens, there is a feel of that hesitancy to move out of our very definite comfort, stay at home zones. Obliged to stay in and stay local and stay alone and apart has had its effects on us. Doing something simple like meeting our friends in the park seems unnatural, unreal and a big exertion. But it does not have to be. We are all in the same boat. With trust and sensitivity to each other’s unique experience of lockdown and the pandemic itself, we can begin something new. We are not alone and we can, like the baby thrush, learn a new way of living, where we depend on each other and are encouraged and emboldened by each other.
 
A prayer….
 
Father God , thank you that you are the rock on which we stand. Thank you that you are our Protector and you go before us into each day. Thank you that your presence brings us calm and peace and your spirit draws us forward and closer. I pray for each one of us, that we would know you, hear you, see you and face each day without fear, but with courage and determination.
In Jesus’ name we pray.
 
Amen

Find out more about Self-Reliant Groups: http://www.church-poverty.org.uk/srg

Speaking Truth to Power: A Reflection on the Dignity for All Conference 

Photos & quotes: the energy, hope & resolve of Dignity For All 2023

It’s like they’ve flown: the awesome power of craft & companionship

An Introduction to the Joint Public Issues Team

Addressing poverty with lived experience: the APLE Collective

Fair fares in the North East, thanks to students!

Silhouettes of eight people, against different coloured backgrounds

Stories that challenge: Emma’s road to church

Mt Tabor Methodist Church in Sheffield, with a "Neighbourhood Voices" logo superimposed.

Sheffield voices: We need higher incomes and more for young people

A silhouette shot of a church, with the setting sun visible through its steeple

Cost of living scandal: 7 truly useful church responses

Hold the moment

A surprise hail storm makes Self-Reliant Group facilitator, Laura Walton, consider the uncertainties of life

Working up a sweat whilst digging at the allotment this week, I was confused by what I thought was blossom drifting onto the dark soil I was exposing. It was in fact small tight balls of hail! Perfectly round pellets of ice bouncing down around me. I’d brought packets of seeds with the intention of planting but the hail threw me. Planting in the snow I knew would not impress anyone and certainly was not to be found in my RHS Allotment book.
 
Early morning shopping at Aldi found me stopped in my tracks as I emerged into a mini blizzard. Quite incredible after coffee in the back garden only the day before resulted in a sun burnt ear! Hail, sun, snow, sun. Gloves, t shirt, scarf, sunglasses. Life is still very unpredictable. But one thing we have learnt in the last year is to take each day a little bit more as it comes and rely less on our own plans and organisation of our time. Without thinking and worrying too much about what is out of our control, we have more time to enjoy the things of today especially if that means snow in April when the supermarkets are full of disposable bbqs and sun loungers.
 
As shops spruce themselves up for a return to business and we get ready for a gear change with hairdressers open again, charity shops to be delved into, local libraries and the odd theme park, let’s not forget the lesson of the snow in spring or the hail instead of blossom. We live in unpredictable times and have only some control over our tomorrows, unlike Mr. Johnson. So we have learnt to give up worrying beyond this current 24 hours and concentrate more on the NOW which is actually always enough. We can say this to ourselves, our anxious kids going back to school again, friends going into work again with the public and those who have been religiously shielding and who can now after one or two jabs and a letter, jump on a bus into town, grab a coffee, hit the sales………or not.
 
We all have our fears about next week, our excitements and our reliefs but all come with an underlying unease of what the future holds and how long it will all last, despite the rapidly rising number of people who have had one jab or two.
We all have questions and spend time wondering about ifs and maybes when we should be being content with the moment that is.
 
The God in the bible takes those questions, wonderings, uncertainties and fears off our hands and points us instead to the moments surrounding us. There we can find everything we need and so much more.
 
Stop and think about this moment that is, whether it’s a night time or a daytime moment, a dark or a bright one, a noisy one with warm voices or a silent and cold one. God knows where you are and where you are at. He knows your moment and he knows you. He holds that moment and he holds you now and for always.
 
From the song …..If He can hold the world,
He can hold this moment.
 
You’ll find that He’s enough.

Find out more about Self-Reliant Groups: http://www.church-poverty.org.uk/srg 

Speaking Truth to Power: A Reflection on the Dignity for All Conference 

Photos & quotes: the energy, hope & resolve of Dignity For All 2023

It’s like they’ve flown: the awesome power of craft & companionship

An Introduction to the Joint Public Issues Team

Addressing poverty with lived experience: the APLE Collective

Fair fares in the North East, thanks to students!

Silhouettes of eight people, against different coloured backgrounds

Stories that challenge: Emma’s road to church

Mt Tabor Methodist Church in Sheffield, with a "Neighbourhood Voices" logo superimposed.

Sheffield voices: We need higher incomes and more for young people

A silhouette shot of a church, with the setting sun visible through its steeple

Cost of living scandal: 7 truly useful church responses

Why did I write Second Class Citizens and what can we learn?

In Second Class Citizens, author Stef Benstead shows how the rights of disabled people have been systematically breached in the UK since 2010.

The videos on this page show Stef Benstead, author of Second Class Citizens.

What does it mean to speak truth to power? What messages need to be told, and who most needs to listen?

These questions are always integral to our thinking and priorities at Church Action on Poverty, and we stand alongside those who have been marginalised.

We work with many inspiring groups and individuals around the country, but one of those leading the way is one of our own trustees, Stef Benstead.

Stef Benstead with a copy her book, Second Class Citizens, which looks at the way the UK has breached disabled people's human rights
Stef Benstead with her book, Second Class Citizens

An important but under-told story

Stef is the author of Second Class Citizens, which is a devastating critique of the way the UK has treated disabled people in the past ten years.

In it, she charts the development of attitudes and care towards disabled people in the past few centuries. Next, she analyses and deconstructs the policies of the past decade.

The book also contains powerful true stories. In many cases, people have been swept deeper into poverty by a system that ought to be a lifeline.

In 2018, the UN’s special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, delivered a scathing report on the UK’s approach over the past few years. Policies and practices he examined have left millions trapped in poverty by circumstances out of their control

The report generated much discussion, and yet two years earlier, a similar evidence-led report on the UK’s treatment of disabled people went largely unreported.

The opening lines of Second Class Citizens begin with that study. Stef writes:

“In 2016, the United Nations made an extraordinary announcement: that the United Kingdom, a rich and developed country, was violating basic human rights.”

Widely-contrasting views

The Government was dismissive of the UN report and said it was actually a world leader in the field.

Second Class Citizens is a forensic examination of the UN and UK’s opposing claims. Stef finds a catalogue of changes to policies, rules, administration, approach, and political rhetoric. Overwhelmingly, the changes contributed to a steady and steep erosion of disabled people’s rights, opportunities and incomes. In addition, they were all implemented with minimal consultation or discussion with those affected.

In the end, Stef finds the evidence overwhelmingly supports the UN position. By contrast, the Government’s claims and arguments do not stand up under cross examination.

Stef writes: “The post-2010 Governments have caused substantial harm to sick and disabled people’s health, living standards and social inclusion.

“It has done so without any moral or economic justification, and has signally failed to uphold one of governments’ most fundamental reasons to exist: to ensure and improve the access to basic rights of its most vulnerable citizens.

“Sick and disabled people in the UK today are treated as second-class citizens, and until this situation is rectified the UK Government will continue to be violating international law by its ongoing breach of disabled people’s rights.”

There is a better way

Our society should not be like this.

The goal of a modern society, Stef writes, should be that sick and disabled people have access as far as possible to the same choices as everyone else, in terms of where to live, work or study, and what to eat, wear and do.

However, that ideal has become a more distant hope for several reasons. Firstly, the narrowing of criteria for help has locked more people out of the support system. Secondly, the removal of some support systems completely has cut people adrift, and those with greatest needs have endured the greatest cuts. Thirdly, many attempts to improve the system have been flawed, often due to failure to properly consult and listen.

Stef has the genetic connective tissue disorder, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, and Postural Tahycardia Syndrome and fibromyalgia. This means she is always exhausted and in pain. She has a 1st from Cambridge but had to leave her PhD at the same university when she became ill. 

It was her own experience that led her into researching disability rights and treatment. Drawing on this experience and research, Second Class Citizens aims to provide a clear and lasting answer to many recurring questions. 

“Speaking truth to power is important when it means MPs listen to someone who they do not normally listen to and hear about issues they do not normally hear about,” says Stef.

“I would hope that would stimulate them to then look more into the issues and learn more about it from another perspective. We need to keep saying what is wrong and we need to have a story of how things can be better.”

Language matters

The book is compelling in its assessment of Government policies, and statutory systems:, and makes clear demonstrations of failure. For instance, people are hamstrung by infuriating errors and flawed systems. Public transport is often inaccessible. Support is frequently unreliable. The flawed benefits system punishes minor or non-existent errors. Letters from the DWP say large-print or Braille options are available… but fail to say so in large print or Braille,. As a result, blind people are often unable to read important correspondence.

Stef also examines the political rhetoric that has sustained many of the injustices and systemic problems. She scrutinises, dissects and finds wanting the narrative of a ‘dependency culture’ that has been adopted by many politicians in modern times.

She concludes:

“It is not simply that there is a lack of evidence, but that the evidence shows a strong commitment to work, even among people who are too ill to work or whose only experience of work is of low-paid, dead end jobs.”

Throughout the book, Stef introduces people with first-hand experience of systems and policies that have made life harder.

Adam, for instance, had a good relationship with his landlord, until Universal Credit swept him into rent arrears. Beth, who has autism and severe anxiety, was in seclusion in hospital not because of her own needs but because the hospital has lacked staff. She spends more than 23 hours a day in one room and has not been outside since early 2018.

Their stories are among dozens that hammer home the impact of the systems Stef examines.

Stef is part of the Spartacus network, a collective of disabled or ill researchers, and also works with the Chronic Illness Inclusion Project. She is also a trustee of Church Action on Poverty.

Speaking Truth to Power: A Reflection on the Dignity for All Conference 

Photos & quotes: the energy, hope & resolve of Dignity For All 2023

It’s like they’ve flown: the awesome power of craft & companionship

An Introduction to the Joint Public Issues Team

Addressing poverty with lived experience: the APLE Collective

Fair fares in the North East, thanks to students!

Silhouettes of eight people, against different coloured backgrounds

Stories that challenge: Emma’s road to church

Mt Tabor Methodist Church in Sheffield, with a "Neighbourhood Voices" logo superimposed.

Sheffield voices: We need higher incomes and more for young people

A silhouette shot of a church, with the setting sun visible through its steeple

Cost of living scandal: 7 truly useful church responses

David Goodbourn Lecture 2021 – register now

The lecture 'Untangling the legacies of slavery: Deconstructing Mission Christianity for our contemporary Kerygma.’ will be given by Anthony Reddie, Director of the Oxford Centre for Religion and Culture.

May 11, 7:30 pm
‘Untangling the legacies of slavery: Deconstructing Mission Christianity for our contemporary Kerygma.’

The Centre for Theology and Justice is delighted to welcome Anthony Reddie to give the annual David Goodbourn Lecture. This lecture, built upon research undertaken for the Council for World Mission’s ‘Legacies of Slavery’ project, will outline the necessity of deconstructing the problematic history of Christian mission and its relationship to slavery and colonialism.

Anthony Reddie. Director, Oxford Centre for Religion and Culture. Anthony is a leading scholar in the practice of Black Theology within grassroots communities. The significance of his writings and research is recognised internationally.

The Centre for Theology and Justice brings together a number of organisations involved in justice issues, including Luther King House, Churches Together in Britain and Ireland (CTBI), Church Action on Poverty, and Christian Aid.

Speaking Truth to Power: A Reflection on the Dignity for All Conference 

Photos & quotes: the energy, hope & resolve of Dignity For All 2023

It’s like they’ve flown: the awesome power of craft & companionship

An Introduction to the Joint Public Issues Team

Addressing poverty with lived experience: the APLE Collective

Fair fares in the North East, thanks to students!

Silhouettes of eight people, against different coloured backgrounds

Stories that challenge: Emma’s road to church

Mt Tabor Methodist Church in Sheffield, with a "Neighbourhood Voices" logo superimposed.

Sheffield voices: We need higher incomes and more for young people

A silhouette shot of a church, with the setting sun visible through its steeple

Cost of living scandal: 7 truly useful church responses

A week that changed everything….

Self-Reliant Group facilitator, Laura Walton, reflects on the story of Holy Week

From celebration to despair, then embarrassment and humiliation. Even though the disciples of Jesus had been told what to expect more than once, the adoration of the crowd , the triumphant faces and them processing through the midst of it, was intoxicating. The guys were lifted high and bathed in the glory of the one they had been following faithfully for 3 years.
 
So to see him hanging on a cross, his bloody hands and feet no longer spelling victory but defeat, caused them to scatter, to deny they ever even knew him. Their Saviour, their King was no longer able to lead them out of captivity. They were lost.
 
That brings us to Good Friday, a bleak day where all over the world churches are stripped of any ornamentation and even pictures are turned to face the walls. Services recalling Jesus’ words on the cross, are sombre and reflective and as each person contemplates their own part in that Holy day, intensely sad. Jesus’ disciples had no idea what would happen 3 days after Jesus died on the cross. But over 2000 years since that first resurrection morning, we do.
 
We know the story of the stone miraculously rolled away from the tomb and the burial cloths where Jesus’ body had lain. We know how their grief turned to joy when they heard the incredible news that Jesus was no longer dead, but alive, walking and talking. He had told them, prepared them for all of this but the reality and the depths of their emotions blurred their grasp on his words and his promises.
 
In order to know the Easter joy, we need to feel the pain of that Good Friday and to know our part in it. In dying, Jesus was being separated from his Father, for the sake of everyone who mocked and jeered him on that day, together with those who couldn’t bear to watch but couldn’t bear to never see him again. Together with us today and all those people in between. Somehow inexplicably, he was taking what should be our comeuppance for lives lived selfishly and outside of God, on his own outstretched arms as he hung there. As his last breath exited his wounded, blameless body, his followers are granted freedom.
 
Living forever in close harmony with God is what is promised and what can be delivered because of Jesus on the cross. His death gives us life. We can choose it or not.
 
We have heard so much bad news this last year. Surely it is time to hear some amazingly good news. Listen, reflect and choose. 

Find out more about Self-Reliant Groups: http://www.church-poverty.org.uk/srg .

Speaking Truth to Power: A Reflection on the Dignity for All Conference 

Photos & quotes: the energy, hope & resolve of Dignity For All 2023

It’s like they’ve flown: the awesome power of craft & companionship

An Introduction to the Joint Public Issues Team

Addressing poverty with lived experience: the APLE Collective

Fair fares in the North East, thanks to students!

Silhouettes of eight people, against different coloured backgrounds

Stories that challenge: Emma’s road to church

Mt Tabor Methodist Church in Sheffield, with a "Neighbourhood Voices" logo superimposed.

Sheffield voices: We need higher incomes and more for young people

A silhouette shot of a church, with the setting sun visible through its steeple

Cost of living scandal: 7 truly useful church responses

‘Life on the Breadline’ announces their End of Project Conference, 24-25th June 2021

Our partners at the ‘Life on the Breadline: Christianity, Poverty and Politics in the 21st Century City’ project at Coventry University invite you to share their research at their End of Project Conference.

Image produced by Beth Waters for Life on the Breadline

24–25 June 2021 10:00am to 4:15pm UK time

A two-day online conference from the Life on the Breadline project team as the culmination of three years of research into Christian responses to UK poverty in the context of austerity.

The conference will combine sessions with presentations and Q&A, and interactive workshops.  Sessions at the conference will include presentations from the Life on the Breadline project team – Chris Shannahan, Robert Beckford, Peter Scott and Stephanie Denning – on the research findings, plus interactive workshops on researching poverty, asset-based community development, and Black Church responses to austerity, and guest speakers Dr Naomi Maynard (Together Liverpool) and Professor Anthony Reddie (University of Oxford and University of South Africa).  At the conference we will also be launching the Anti-Poverty Charter which is being developed in consultation with research participants in the Life on the Breadline research.

The anticipated audience for the conference is theology and social science academics, church leaders, and practitioners in church and poverty response settings. The majority of sessions are aimed at all three audiences, and the target audience is noted alongside each session in the provisional conference programme.

To find out more including the provisional conference programme, and to book your free place visit the Life on the Breadline website at https://breadlineresearch.coventry.ac.uk/events/end-of-project-conference/

Day 1 - 24th June 2021

Day 2 - 25th June 2021

Nothing changes around here – a poem from ‘Same Boat?’

The price of conformity – a poem from ‘Same Boat?’

My Mask – a poem from ‘Same Boat?’

Reset The Debt – email your MP now

100 Days – a poem from ‘Same Boat?’

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Church Action on Poverty North East annual report 2020

Sheffield Church Action on Poverty 2020 Pilgrimage

Planning a Lent programme for your church in 2021?

The Collective, Episode 2 – Community responses

Sheffield Poverty Update, September 2020

SPARK newsletter, autumn 2020

Book review: No Fixed Abode

3 key ways we will be challenging poverty this autumn: Join us

Church Action on Poverty North East 2020 AGM, 25 September

Let’s walk upon the water

A walk in the park

Look after each other

Silhouettes of eight people, against different coloured backgrounds

Stories that challenge: Emma’s road to church

Mt Tabor Methodist Church in Sheffield, with a "Neighbourhood Voices" logo superimposed.

Sheffield voices: We need higher incomes and more for young people

A silhouette shot of a church, with the setting sun visible through its steeple

Cost of living scandal: 7 truly useful church responses

Look up child

Self-Reliant Groups facilitator Laura Walton focuses on the importance of mindfulness in the last few weeks of lockdown

Mindfulness is all about appreciating the moment and doing what it takes to stay in the moment. We learn to hold back our thoughts and train them to sit and wait while our minds settle and are still. No more thinking of all the things we need to do by this evening. Taking a break from those anxious what ifs about tomorrow or next week, those worries about our children and their children, relatives, neighbours, situations which we just can’t fix. It is about stopping and looking and listening, even smelling, tasting and touching.
 
Whilst walking in the park this week with a friend, I caused her to stop and instructed her to look and stop talking. She has been shielding and working from home very reluctantly. Instead of being swamped by children with their noise and clamouring for attention, she has gazed through her window, sat at a desk,in front of her computer and often in silence for most of the last year. Every week we would walk and she would talk, downloading the week indoors as we passed impromptu illegal gatherings of drummers, football matches with supposedly no spectators, the guy cutting hair under a tree over near the closed tennis courts. When I realised she was going to talk her way straight past a huge bank of early daffodils and late snowdrops I had to redirect her energy and attention to something beautiful, wild, resilient and resistent to the drammatic changes that we have all had to face this last year.She continued breathing but stopped still.
 
Despite the upheavals and U turns in our lives, all those sleeping bulbs needed was time at a certain temperature to activate growth and produce a fine display to capture and hold the frenetic activity of my friend’s mind mid download. And she was still and quiet and smiling.
 
How much more beautiful do the blossom trees look this year? Can we take time in these last few weeks before Boris sets us free again to walk and stop and look. Can we look up? Instead of leaving our footprints on the white blossom petals spilt on the pavement, let’s lift our eyes to those gloriously decorated branches. Our worlds have become so small over the last few months and our horizons merely as far as the nearest loaf of bread and bottle of milk. It’s definitely time to look up and be reminded of the vastness of the sky, the knowledge of who is in control and the opportunities that still lie out there for us

Speaking Truth to Power: A Reflection on the Dignity for All Conference 

Photos & quotes: the energy, hope & resolve of Dignity For All 2023

It’s like they’ve flown: the awesome power of craft & companionship

An Introduction to the Joint Public Issues Team

Addressing poverty with lived experience: the APLE Collective

Fair fares in the North East, thanks to students!

Silhouettes of eight people, against different coloured backgrounds

Stories that challenge: Emma’s road to church

Mt Tabor Methodist Church in Sheffield, with a "Neighbourhood Voices" logo superimposed.

Sheffield voices: We need higher incomes and more for young people

A silhouette shot of a church, with the setting sun visible through its steeple

Cost of living scandal: 7 truly useful church responses

The Final Push

Self-Reliant Group facilitator, Laura Walton, prepares for the final stretch of lockdown

As the runners round that final bend, there is always an expectation that one or more of the lean mean machines flashing lycra and sticky plasters strapping their bodies together, will find the throttle. They will move away from the pack with 100 metres to go, muscles straining and eyes fixed like steel on the finish. The others, faces grimacing with desperation and nothing in the tank to respond with, watch as they get left behind. They have nothing more to give. Lying on the track, chests heaving, arms thrown over their faces, they know they gave it their all, but had nothing in reserve.
 
So with two weeks to go until we can meet outside as two households or 6 individuals, are we ready for our final straight? Have we abandoned that race altogether? Or are we dragging our bodies by sheer will power? Did that will power leave us months ago and now we mooch around in the changing room, warm, comfortable and safe?
 
Whàt effect has 3 lockdowns and numerous tight restrictions here in the North West had on us? We’ve almost certainly been contemplating what we will do and where we will go come the end of this month and then later on. The future potentially is bright, depending on Boris’s criterion being met. We could have a haircut, browse the charity shops and meet someone for a sit down coffee…..all in the same day. Or we could receive our shopping delivery, spend an hour on the phone, sort the plastic pots, paint a wall and collapse onto our beds with the cat.
 
For some of us that finishing line just gets nearer and nearer as we think about the sheer joy of lying on the track, chests heaving, no more running. For others, that finishing line is a mirage, a suggestion but nothing definite, nothing tangible. We all started on the same track, but sometime soon some will leave to celebrate, to rest, to tell the story whilst others will still be moving towards that finish line, the one that never seems to get any nearer.
 
So this is where, just as much as before, if not more so, we need to be understanding and encouraging and think less of celebrating our own freedom and more of helping those we know, finish and get off that track.We need to have something in the tank to have a shoulder to lend or re-run that last lap beside someone else. Depending on the encouragement we get, we could all be celebrating together, finishing that race.
 
So are we ready for the final push? Can we get someone else we know over that finish line when all they want to do is stay in the changing room?
One of my favourite bible verses is not about persevering and running the race, although that is a good one. It’s about relying on God when our own resources are depleted and having our strength renewed. Then instead of being able just to drag our bodies over the line and finish the race, we can soar on wings and never grow tired again.
 
This verse is for us all, our families, our friends and especially for those communities all over the world who are still very much in the grip of the pandemic. Let’s put our hope in God.
 
But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not grow faint.
Isaiah 40:31


Find out more about Self-Reliant Groups: http://www.church-poverty.org.uk/srg 

Speaking Truth to Power: A Reflection on the Dignity for All Conference 

Photos & quotes: the energy, hope & resolve of Dignity For All 2023

It’s like they’ve flown: the awesome power of craft & companionship

An Introduction to the Joint Public Issues Team

Addressing poverty with lived experience: the APLE Collective

Fair fares in the North East, thanks to students!

Silhouettes of eight people, against different coloured backgrounds

Stories that challenge: Emma’s road to church

Mt Tabor Methodist Church in Sheffield, with a "Neighbourhood Voices" logo superimposed.

Sheffield voices: We need higher incomes and more for young people

A silhouette shot of a church, with the setting sun visible through its steeple

Cost of living scandal: 7 truly useful church responses

Sheffield Church Action on Poverty Update, March 2021

Sheffield Poverty Update, September 2020

SPARK newsletter, autumn 2020

Running a Good Society conversation

International Women’s Day – Sheroes

Self-Reliant Group Facilitator, Laura Walton, gives thanks for all the women who inspire and support us

We were blessed this week in Brews on Thursday as people shared who were the women in their lives who had inspired them. Women who served the poor in Calcutta and challenged authorities to do the same or who made a stand by sitting in a seat in a bus or who used poetry to talk about injustices women had endured. It was touching how many Mums and Grandmas also made it into the top spot. One shared how inspired she was by her 3 year old granddaughter. Loving, doting grandmothers shared their joy in their grandchildren, sharing their wisdom of lives lived despite set backs and disadvantage.

But not everyone has positive role models in the women in their family and so it’s important to hear about these stories of people we don’t know and see their profiles, read their biographies and watch their stories unfold. Maybe that’s when our own stories become much more powerful when we began them in a void, empty of encouraging and empowering words and actions loaded with love. Sometimes just growing up is tough and even more so these days with the huge pressures of social media. We have learnt that our children do not need to wait until they have grown up to make a mark on the world, they can start now. Whether it’s selling lemonade on the street to support Syrian refugees or having conversations with Donald Trump about the massive devastation already wreaked on the world through carbon emissions. We thank God that our children and teens are noticing what is going on in the world today, perhaps in a way that we didn’t. Not only noticing but recognizing that their own actions can collectively make a huge difference in the world and certainly make changes in their families. At some point we must have encouraged them ( alongside others) to see the bigger picture and given them the courage and confidence to do something for others.
And we can keep on doing that. Encouraging them, affirming them and noticing what they try and do.We can help them through their growing up challenge in this crazy world, to be courageous and confident and bring change. However big or small.

On International Women’s day we can applaud women who have challenged inequality and injustice. We can cheer those who have trailblazed and set their sights on being in positions which affect the greatest changes in nations. We can thumbs up those women who speak out and make themselves unpopular and those who risk their lives protesting in a crowd. And we can contemplate and silently praise those millions of women who struggled to keep their under 5s from dying from disease, or to keep their kids in shoes or enough food on the table to see you them through the day. We nod in agreement to those women who walked miles every day for water to bathe their kids and those who held down 3 jobs so that they could pay the rent. Then there are those big sisters who brushed their siblings’ hair and fetched their mum’s medication. We see you all.

You are our sheroes. We join our women’s voices together to call you out and say thank you for being our quiet inspiration of resilience and persistence. For never giving up when all seemed against you ever being able to put your feet up, we thank you. For putting people first and serving them until the last star had disappeared in the dawn light and it was time to start again. We see you. Thank you.

In the Bible the prophet Micah describes you and his words can help us all live lives our grandmas would be proud of.

 “And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”
Micah 6:8

Find out more about Self-Reliant Groups: http://www.church-poverty.org.uk/srg

Speaking Truth to Power: A Reflection on the Dignity for All Conference 

Photos & quotes: the energy, hope & resolve of Dignity For All 2023

It’s like they’ve flown: the awesome power of craft & companionship

An Introduction to the Joint Public Issues Team

Addressing poverty with lived experience: the APLE Collective

Fair fares in the North East, thanks to students!

Silhouettes of eight people, against different coloured backgrounds

Stories that challenge: Emma’s road to church

Mt Tabor Methodist Church in Sheffield, with a "Neighbourhood Voices" logo superimposed.

Sheffield voices: We need higher incomes and more for young people

A silhouette shot of a church, with the setting sun visible through its steeple

Cost of living scandal: 7 truly useful church responses