2024 Review of the Year!
2024 has been another hectic year for the FaithAction team. Here’s some highlights of our 2024.
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#FaithinPartnership Week
The third annual #FaithinPartnership week took place between 9th and 13th September. Coming after an election that caught many, including us, by surprise, the week had an opportunity for faith groups to hear from the new Faith Minister, Lord Khan of Burnley, at our Faith for the Future breakfast event. Lord Khan spoke about the importance the government placed on working with faith groups as they looked to deliver their policy agenda, and how he was looking forward to hearing the views of faith groups. Our event also celebrated 10 years of the Faith Covenant, hearing from representatives of Covenant areas about the difference the Covenant has made to relationships between faith groups and local authorities.
The week also saw faith leaders and health professionals gather for a roundtable event in the House of Lords, hosted by the Bishop of London Sarah Mullally, discussing FaithAction’s upcoming national maternity inequalities campaign. This campaign, Faith for a Safe Start, will encourage collaboration with faith leaders, faith communities, and the health system in supporting projects to tackle these inequalities, recognising the role of faith in the pregnancy journey. It will be accompanied by the publication of a toolkit of the same name, which will offer key information and practical guidance on what can be done locally.
Inter Faith Week
2024 saw the very sad closure of the Inter Faith Network. However, Inter Faith Week, which has been organised by IFN since 2009, was able to carry on as a celebration of the fantastic work faith groups do in partnership with each other. Like most years, this week was a busy one for the FaithAction team.
On Tuesday 12th November, we supported Tower Hamlets Inter Faith Forum’s event held at Tower Hamlets Town Hall in Whitechapel. The event focused on communities living together in harmony, including a look at how community and faith landscape of the borough has evolved over time courtesy of Tower Hamlets Libraries Archives, and speakers who reflected upon their own experiences of being part of faith communities.
On Wednesday 13th November, we attended a reception in the Houses of Parliament to celebrate Brent re-signing their Faith Covenant. The event featured Brent Multi-Faith Forum’s Co-chairs, Rabbi Dr Frank Dabba Smith and Mustafa Field as well as leader of Brent Council, Cllr Mohammed Butt alongside two of Brent’s MPs, Dawn Butler and Georgia Gould. All of the speakers praised the role of Brent’s faith community in making the borough a vibrant and safe place. The event also included young people from the borough, with an announcement of the start of a new initiative to engage with young people of faith in Brent.
Wednesday also saw Cornwall become the 33rd local authority area to sign a Faith Covenant, also becoming the first predominantly rural area to do so, and also being the first Covenant area to have a bi-lingual Covenant, with the Covenant text being written in English and Cornish.
Faith Covenant
Alongside Cornwall signing their Covenant, two other local authority areas signed a Faith Covenant this year, with Hertfordshire and Greater Manchester Combined Authority also showing their commitment to joint working between faith groups and the local authority. The team also had a number of conversations with other local authority areas looking to sign a Covenant in the near future, and we hope to have them join the Faith Covenant community over the next year.
The Faith Covenant also became a focus of the General Election campaign. In an open letter to faith leaders from Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour Party leader committed to promoting Faith Covenants to all local authority areas. With a Labour victory at the election, we are hopeful of working with the government in order to help facilitate this roll out of the Faith Covenant.
All Party Parliamentary Group on Faith and Society
The APPG on Faith and Society held a Parliamentary reception in February to celebrate the previous Government’s Faith New Deal Pilot Funding. Our event focused on one of the fund winners, Love Southampton, featuring a presentation from Paul Woodman and Keith Brown of Love Southampton. We were also delighted to be joined by Baroness Scott of Bybrook, then-Faith Minister, who spoke of the positive effect the Faith New Deal funding has been able to make to communities.
July’s General Election saw the work of APPG having to be placed on pause as we focused on its reconstitution. Sadly, the election saw a number of MPs involved in the APPG either stepping down as an MP or losing their seat, and we’d like to thank them all for their work with us over the course of the last Parliament. We were also sad but excited to see long term Chair, Sir Stephen Timms MP, receive a ministerial position at the Department for Work and Pensions, which means he will have to step down as Chair. We especially want to thank Sir Stephen for his commitment to the APPG and for working so closely with us, and look forward to working with him in his new role.
Creative English
FaithAction’s Creative English programme continued to grow from strength to strength over the course of the year. 2024 saw the 10th anniversary of the first hub trained in Creative English by FaithAction, and it was great to re-visit the hub earlier in the year as they received some training as part of the Creative English licence programme.
The early part of the year saw us completing our programmes of delivery with Birmingham City Council and Greater Manchester ICB, both of which focused on our Creative English for Health programme. We were also able to deliver a Creative English for Health programme in partnership with the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham’s Public Health team, as well as beginning the first of our three years of delivery of our original English language programme in partnership with the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.
This year also saw another innovation in our Creative English programme, as we delivered a pilot programme in Birmingham focused on Infant health. The programme is designed to work with communities where there are particular issues around infant mortality, helping participants identify key health issues they may experience during pregnancy and early life
Birmingham Faith Champions Programme
October saw the start of a brand new programme in Birmingham. The Faith Champions programme will be working with the Christian and Sikh groups in Birmingham. Recognising the need for tailored response to health inequalities within the diverse communities of Birmingham, the Public Health Division of Birmingham City Council have commissioned community engagement partners to work with these communities to encourage sharing of public health information and co-design projects to deliver vital health-focused work to the local community.
FaithAction have already begun holding focus groups with members of these communities, with further focus groups planned for the new year.
What Matters to us!
In the run up to the election, we asked you for your views. In a series of weekly surveys, we asked you to tell us which areas of policy were important to you, before taking a deeper dive into specific policy topics, to help us find out what you wanted our future government to focus on. We then spent some time looking over your feedback – you can read the report of our findings here.
Local Projects
The team at FaithAction also continued to support the Tower Hamlets Inter Faith Forum, with a regular series of meetings taking place across the year. We were also excited to launch another round of our Churches Health Action Partnership (CHAP), working with churches in Tower Hamlets to deliver health focused projects to their communities.
In Barking and Dagenham, the Faith Leaders Network were also able to run projects focused on tackling health inequalities within the borough, using their connections with the community to deliver interventions for conditions most prevalent or of most concern.
Looking ahead to next year
Next year is hopefully going to be another exciting year for the team. We’re looking forward to the continued expansion of the Creative English programme, working with partners across the country. We’re also looking forward to reconstituting the APPG and continuing to meet with policy makers as we discuss the role faith can play in making a difference.
The team at FaithAction wish you a very happy new year and you too can continue to make a difference to your community.
