Faith in Community Scotland have a mission to see the poorest communities in Scotland Flourish. In this week's blog Stuart Bell, community development worker with FICS explains how they try to achieve this goal.
I am Stuart, a community development worker with Faith in Community Scotland. I still call myself the newbie, but I have been with the team almost a year now – so the time limit on the title has probably expired!
I work alongside faith groups who are doing, or who are interested in doing, anti-poverty work in their communities. We recognise that in areas of poverty and depravation the skills and assets of local people are key to affecting transformation. We work to encourage these skills, which are essential in driving forward local projects that tackle various social problems, such as barriers for refugees and asylum seekers; food justice work; social isolation; and homelessness.
An interesting part of the work is the variety of folks that I encounter from different faith communities who all have a burning desire to use their gifts and abilities to make their communities a better place.
I’ve worked all over the city, and it has been inspiring to see the desire of local people to work towards the common good, even when faced with challenges of limited funding and available resources. Our approach of working with groups is done at their own pace. By taking the lead from them, our intensity levels of engagement will differ from group to group.
Our engagement may be a one off or occasional pop in to help direct a group to funding sources, or make links with others doing similar work. Or we may engage with a project more intensively over a longer period of time, helping to support them in different areas that enable their activities.
An example of a project that I have built strong links with is the ESOL project at St Aloysius Church in Garnethill. They have been working with refugees and asylum seekers - who stay all over the city - for a couple of years now, helping to teach them ‘survival English’. This equips them with the language skills needed to take them forward in their integration in Glasgow. I have been exploring with the project leaders ways in which links with other groups doing similar work can help to develop the projects scope of reach, and also journeying with them as they face the demands of providing a volunteer-run service five days every week.
Other work involves mental health and wellbeing – particularly the role faith groups can play in providing such support in their communities. We ran an event with input from SAMH and Finn’s Place Centre for Wellbeing earlier in the year, attended by leaders from different faith groups. The event helped to shed some light on what resources are available to groups who want to affect positive mental health, and how stigma surrounding the topic can be tackled.
We work across faith communities in Glasgow and the Central Belt, so if you are linked to a faith community that is interested in anti-poverty work please email me at stuart@faithincommunityscotland.org so we can explore how we can help to develop and support your vision. To find our more about the different areas of work Faith in Community Scotland is involved in, please visit our website https://www.faithincommunityscotland.org or like us on Facebook!