Equipping and empowering BAME social action leaders to serve their communities: Civil Society Consulting CIC partners with national multi-faith organisation Strengthening Faith Institutions to take ‘Steps to Sustainability’ to the next level, with the support of the National Lottery’s emergency COVID-19 funding.
Civil Society Consulting CIC has partnered with Strengthening Faith Institutions on ‘Steps to Sustainability’ (S2S) – a joint initiative that will outreach to 60 BAME faith social action leaders of ALL of the nine major world faiths in England, guiding and supporting them to sustain and develop their emergency responses to the pandemic, get through the crisis as frontline civil society organisations and provide hyper-local services in the diverse, multi-faith communities they care so much about.
This comes on the back of the Levelling Up Our Communities report by Danny Kruger MP, which advocates for a modernised ‘infrastructure support’ sector and sustainable approaches, like S2S, alongside a stronger engagement with faith communities. The parliamentary report sets out a vision for sustaining the community spirit seen during lockdown by more concerted interventions by ‘modernised CVS-style’ organisations in supporting and empowering people to play active roles in their neighbourhoods.
Mustafa Field OBE, Programme Leader, Strengthening Faith Institutions (and Director, Faiths
Forum for London) expressed:
“As a growing national multi-faith organisation we are keen to pro-actively advance leadership, capacity and resilience – and this is needed more than ever in this pandemic crisis. Working with local faith leaders and their groups, and in partnership with Civil Society Consulting CIC, we now have a real opportunity to strengthen local networks of support by helping them develop and deliver their own vital projects and therefore better engender understanding and engagement between different faith communities.”
Mark Ereira-Guyer, Civil Society Consulting CIC Director commented:
“We need to get out there, especially in the most negatively Covid impacted areas of the country, to see how we can together best help the BAME-led faith and civil society sector keep its head above the water, sustain frontline support and services, and even innovate to help everyone in their communities. We’ll be building on our recent sustainability support work in key areas like the Liverpool city region, West Midlands, West Yorkshire, Middlesbrough, east London and Manchester.”