A campaign to lift the voices of people living with poverty and to make challenging poverty to be more prominent in public debate is to be launched next week.
Challenge Poverty Week 11-17 October is a campaign to tackle poverty in England and Wales.
“Challenge Poverty Week 2021 seeks to add to the growing movement to end UK poverty, helping to work towards a position where more people want to solve poverty, find out about the causes, and take action,” said Niall Cooper, director of the ecumenical group Church Action on Poverty, which is coordinating the week in England and Wales. “What needs to change as we emerge from the pandemic to help communities to thrive, whose voices need to be heard, and what more we can do to build a more just and compassionate society together?”
Initiatives in local neighbourhoods have been encouraged to become more vocal about underlying causes of poverty and solutions. Organisations are encouraged to work with groups that have direct experience of the way poverty links to race, gender, sexuality and regional inequalities.
Some Catholic parishes, SVP, and justice and peace groups are putting on events, often ecumenically, to mark the week. Events are either online or in person, and they include inviting local MPs or councillors to speak, visiting local projects, creative activities, or sharing simple images, stories and messages on social media using the hashtag #challengepoverty. All groups are concerned about millions facing hardship this winter with a £20 benefits rise being scrapped this week, but with food and energy bills going up.
The report Navigating Storms will be launched on 12 October, which provides research results on why many families cannot access enough quality food, and what might be done to improve things. There are various poverty hearings, such as the Big Greater Manchester Conversation on Poverty’at Manchester’s Methodist Central Hall on 11 October and Life on the Breadline: the role of churches in challenging poverty on 14 October, presenting the results of a three-year research programme with UK churches.
More about Challenge Poverty Week England and Wales here. Challenge Poverty Week in Scotland is 4-10 October.
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