Home Truths exhibition

I received an email last week infroming me about an exhibition about poverty and homelessness in Newcastle adn thought it might be of some interest to some readers. Part of the text of the email is below

The exhibition has been put together by a team of people from St Thomas Church, Haymarket, Newcastle in response to misunderstandings held by some about the issues of poverty and homelessness. Both these issues are seriously affected by the levels of income, whether from employment or benefits (or both) on which many have to survive. We are concerned as Christians that some people are losing sight of the ‘golden rule’ of the major faiths that we should ‘love our neighbour’.

Developing this exhibition has been both challenging and stimulating for the team and we are hoping that it will have a similar effect on viewers. As part of the exhibition we are showcasing some of the local organizations working alongside those affected by poverty and homelessness.

It is a 3 week exhibition (starting 25th January 2013) at St Thomas Church, Haymarket  and it’s open 10-4, Mon-Sat and is, of course, free! I hope you may be able to drop in at some time to take a look!

Best wishes,

Steve

500 people in Durham call for an end to child poverty…..

… unfortunately for us, these people were in Durham, North Carolina.

Adrian Sinfield kindly sent me this link to a newspaper article about a day-long ‘Faith Summit on Child Poverty’. The piece is very interesting and also very powerful in parts.

The text below relates to comments from a Reverend William Barber:

“We need to open our eyes, and stop the Sunday-morning denial” that 25 percent of North Carolina children live in poverty.

“That is a moral disgrace,” he said.

“We commit ‘attention violence’ against the poor every day, because we don’t even say the word ‘poor’,” he said. “Martin Luther King said that when you ignore the poor, one day the whole system will collapse.”

Politicians seldom talk about the poor, Barber said, but say that focusing on the middle class will help everyone.

But Barber recalled the time his grandmother told him that a house should never be moved from the middle, but from the foundation.

“If you try to move a house from the middle, that does not work,” Barber said. “You will tear it apart. But if you move it from the bottom, then everybody in the house gets blessed.”

This focus on the middle resonates with current UK discussions about the ‘squeezed middle’ and ‘strivers’ and ‘hard-working families’ etc.

The article finishes with the following quote from Reverend J Herbert Neslon II:

“The question at the end of the day is: What in the world are you going to do about it?”

A small favour – a short survey

The North East Child Poverty Commission is undertaking a short on-line survey to understand the difference it has made since it first met in June 2011. It would be very helpful and greatly appreciated if people who have engaged with the work of the Commission (in a very broad sense) in the past 18 months  were able to respond to the survey. The deadline for responses is 5:30pm on Friday 31^st January 2013.

The survey can be accessed here:  https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/nechildpoverty2

The Commission is a multi-agency stakeholder group made up of senior representatives from regional and local public, private and voluntary sector organisations.

The aim of the Commission is to “provide a strong regional voice to raise awareness of the issue of child poverty in the North East and to work collaboratively to tackle the problem.”

Core funding for the work of the Commission ends in March 2013 and the results and feedback from this survey will be used to help shape the future work of the Commission and may be used to seek further funding to support and develop the work of the Commission.

There are 7 questions in the survey, although you do not have to answer all of them if you do not wish to do so.

Respondents are able to remain anonymous if they wish.

If you have any queries relating to the survey, please do not hesitate to contact me. Apologies for cross-posting and duplication.

Best wishes,

Steve