Dear Colleague,

Over fifty people got together on 11 July at Cross Street Chapel for a lively meeting to continue talking about a new way of bringing people together to work on issues in their communities, and across the city.
The meeting was very diverse in terms of ethnicity, culture, and faith background.

We began by people sharing the ‘groans’ of their communities – the issues with which people are struggling. It became clear that many people have real questions about the direction of our society, and the ways in which different groups of people are excluded from the mainstream by poverty, discrimination, crime, and lack of recognition. There was a general agreement that existing channels of influence are not always adequate to tackle these issues.

It felt as if there was a good amount of energy to explore building a city-wide organisation of member groups in Manchester in order to have a vehicle to address some of these issues. We looked at a draft timetable for making that happen, which included:
• A monthly meeting to develop relationships between us, and to plan
• A two-day training programme from 4-6 September, supported by Greg Galluzzo from the Gamaliel Foundation In January 08 a five day residential training for 50-60 people
• From January to March 08, a listening campaign in our different communities to focus on the first issues that we will identify for joint action
• March 08 – our first assembly when we would like to bring together 1,000 people to launch our new organisation

What we do from March 08 onwards will depend upon how successful we have been in building the membership of the organisation and in raising funds. So the next steps are up to all of us! We agreed that at the next meeting we needed commitment from people to do the following:

• Work to bring our own group or institution into our developing organisation
• Work to bring other groups or institutions into membership • Consider going on training in either September 07 or January 08
• Help to raise money
• Bring at least one person to the next meeting

RSVP to Robina Shah, Church Action on Poverty, Central Buildings, Oldham Street,Manchester M1 1JT, Tel: 0161 236 9321

We are also proposing these dates for subsequent meetings: 11 September, 10 October, 13 November, and12 December. Venues have yet to be decided.

Robina Shah, Faith Network for Manchester
Angela Shereni, Zimbabwean Women’s Group
Mark Waters, Church Action on Poverty

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