Welcome to UPDATE

You may have noticed that UPDATE has been absent from your life for a while. As you can see from this edition, this hiatus has been due to pressure of other activities on the EECN team, rather than lack of news to report. Indeed, it has not been possible to cover all our activities in full in this issue and we will return to some and tell you more later in the year. In the meantime, do call us if you have any comments on, or questions about the information covered here.

You may also wonder why this issue is being sent to you by email. The number and scope of activities falling to EECN in its own right and in particular as 'administrative host' to EEFLC has used up all its financial resources, and there is no funding available to design and print UPDATE in its usual format. We hope to return to the traditional newsletter in due course, again, your comments on this change of approach would be helpful.

Jenny Kartupelis, Liaison Officer

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'faith in action' report launch

Cultivating Hope

Faiths Leadership Conference Finds Its Feet

East Of England Constitutional Conference

New web sites

EECN Churches Assembly

'faith in action' report launch

The Bishop of St Albans and the Mayor of Peterbough at the launch.

The vital community role played by thousands of local faith groups across the East of England has been highlighted in a new report, launched on 15 May by John Battle MP, the Prime Minister's Envoy to the Faith Communities at the Hindu Mandir and Community Centre in Luton.

'Faith in Action' was undertaken for the East of England Faiths Leadership Conference (EEFLC), and was supported by EECN, EEDA and the GO- East. Looking at communities in Luton and Peterborough, it shows how groups centred around Christian churches, Muslim mosques, Hindu temples, Jewish synagogues and Sikh gurdwaras are making a vital contribution to the region. This will come as no surprise to people of faith, but this research will bring the impact of their work to the attention of many service planners and providers.

The Bishop of St Albans, the Right Revd Christopher Herbert, who chaired the report's launch, said, 'This research underlines the vital unsung work that faith communities carry out every day, in every town, village and suburb across the East of England, and across the country. If the taxpayer had to meet the cost of these important services being provided day in, day out, across hundreds of local communities, the cost could run into many millions of pounds.'

Addressing an audience of some 60 people, John Battle MP said, 'I welcome this report as an important assessment of the range of services being provided by faith groups in the East of England. It demonstrates the diversity of services being offered, and how each is appreciated and valued by the community.'

He affirmed the ability of faith leaders to bring people together, and called for a new relationship to be formed between top-down government resource provision and bottom-up neighbourhood action, urging faith communities to have the confidence to engage with governance at all levels.
In summing up, he stated that he intends to make the report known to Tony Blair, and hoped that other regions will be inspired to undertake the same.

One of the report's authors, Dr Zoe Morris, of Cambridge University said that the original aim was to assess the social, cultural and economic effects of faith groups on their communities. She described how they bring cohesion, and are often the only stronghold remaining in areas of social breakdown, such as in inner cities. Being a member of a faith community has a very beneficial effect on mental health.

The research suggested that faith leaders tended to under-report social provision, as they think it's just 'what they do'. She suggested they may need to be more aware of their value, in order to attract more support and funding.

Dr Morris said, 'The social impact that the communities are making is extensive and covers everything from lunch clubs and childcare, to bereavement counselling and financial advice. The services are often being provided to people both within and outside the immediate faith community.

'The role played by the faith communities, it seems, is seldom fully appreciated either by the communities themselves, or by potential funding agencies. Yet without them, many of the activities and opportunities would simply not exist, or would be very expensive to provide through statutory agencies.'

The report concluded that faith groups were often best placed to identify the social needs of their members; that partnership with statutory or charitable bodies was important in helping them offer sustainable services; and that they should seek to describe their work in terms of 'social capital' in order to win increased public funding.

To obtain a copy of the 'Faith in Action' report, please contact the EECN office.

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Cultivating Hope

'The church is one of the few organisations that can bring together such a diverse group of people to engage with an issue in a creative and constructive way'. This was how the Bishop of St Albans introduced the second Ely Food and Farming Conference held in February. Entitled 'Cultivating Hope - confronting and managing change in the farming industry' it brought together agricultural students, farmers, food producers, land managers and representatives of many organisations as well as laity and clergy from local churches throughout the region.

Sir Don Curry was one of the two keynote speakers. He outlined progress that had been made since the publication of the Sustainable Food and Farming Report a year earlier. He talked about some of the successes, failures and outlines some of the areas of ongoing change that the industry faced. After the break Rosalind Brown invited the audience to engage in theology. This was for many of the participants a new experience. Talking to one delegate at lunch he said that he hadn't expected to think theologically about the land and use of land and had found it refreshing and very thought provoking.

One of the features of the Ely Conference this year was that GO East wanted to use the conference as part of a consultation process on sustainable food and farming. This meant a great deal of co-operation between Martin Collison from Writtle College on behalf of GO East and the organising group. Martin produced a regional briefing paper and facilitated group responses priorities for a regional food strategy. The three main issues to emerge were

In the afternoon delegates worked on strategic objectives and indicators for the strategy.

A full report has been produced and widely circulated. Our thanks as a Network go to the team from Ely Diocese (Hilary Lavis and Hugh Searle) who did the majority of the work in making this a very successful conference.
Graham Hedger

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Faiths Leadership Conference Finds Its Feet

John Battle MP who addressed the most recent EEFLC meeting is filmed by Anglia TV at Luton's Hindun Temple.

The East of England Faiths Leadership Conference (EEFLC) came into being when the Church Leaders, at their 2001 meeting, agreed to invite people of comparable standing in the other major faith traditions of the region to meet with them to explore the potential for co-operation on relating to bodies of regional governance.

EEFLC has now been established for over a year, and moves from strength to strength. Meeting every three months, it normally attracts around 30 people from the major faiths of the region.

The group has undertaken or supported a number of activities, including the Faith in Action report (see above). These have been designed to help the organisation further its remit of acting as a point of contact with bodies of regional governance, and making input into their strategies and policies. With this in mind, EEFLC drew up a number of position papers - on topics such as education and planning - for submission to the East of England Regional Assembly. In April EEFLC was invited to formally present these papers to a full meeting of EERA, as a result of which a panel including the co-chairs was able to answer queries and explain the group's evolution.

One of EEFLC's main aims was to secure faith representation on EERA, and we have now been advised that there will be a faith seat available to us from July of this year. Nominations have been sought from the church and other faith leaders, and by the time this issue of Update is in circulation, it is likely that one or more names will have been put forward to EERA.

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East Of England Constitutional Conference

In each of the English regions, Constitutional Conventions have been set up to look at the future of regional governance, including the possibility of elected assemblies.

In late 2001, Bishop Christopher Herbert, in his role as Chair of EECN, was approached by regional politicians with a request to chair a preliminary conference that would explore interest in the East of England to move towards elected regional governance. In this context, and as an independent, non-political body, EECN took the role of supervising the conference, so facilitating democratic debate.

The Conference was held at New Hall College, Cambridge, in October 2002, and was attended by about 120 people. Representation from political parties was limited to 25% of the delegates, balanced between Conservative, Liberal Democrat, Labour, Green and UK Independence Party. The churches had 10 delegates, and the remaining places were open to the business and voluntary sectors.

As arrangements for the conference advanced, EECN became very aware of strident opposition. As chair of the forthcoming conference, Bishop Christopher Herbert received high levels of abuse as part of a sustained campaign against him by the UK Independence Party and others who saw the conference as a European 'plot'.

A succession of ministers was promised by the government to address the conference, and each dropped out. Eventually, at very short notice, Kerry Pollard MP (Labour) stepped in. He suggested that the creation of regional capitals and regional government would generate substantially more social, economic and political capital in each region.

Andrew Lansley MP (Conservative) cogently argued that the whole regionalisation process could remove power from local government, and was not logically or practically sustainable. Don Price of the Campaign for the English Regions spoke of the large number of regional quangos: without an elected regional assembly, we lack the means to exercise democratic scrutiny of these bodies at their own level.

Despite careful attempts to limit delegates from political parties to 25% of the total, there was substantial infiltration from the UK Independence Party, whose members turned up in all the other groupings, and attempted to dominate the proceedings by sheer volume. Special credit must be given to Bishop Christopher for managing to keep all participants under control with unfailing courtesy.

Judging by the mood of the conference, there seems to be little appetite for elected regional government in the East of England at this stage. It is interesting to note that there is much more enthusiasm in the North East of England, while elsewhere the way forward is much less clear.

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New web sites

The East of England Faiths Leadership Conference now has its own web site, www.eeflc.org.uk, and the web site for the East of England Churches Network, www.eecn.org.uk, is under development.

In an age when the Internet is a natural place for people to look for information, there was a strong case for having web sites for both bodies. Unfortunately there are significant costs associated with this, in terms of money or time, which is why neither site has been created earlier. What finally triggered the creation of a web site for EEFLC was the publication of the Faith in Action report, which needed to be available for downloading just ahead of the launch so that journalists would be able to access the information in advance.

Also to be found on the EEFLC web site are the position papers presented to EERA at its meeting in April 2003, which identify some of the main social areas where there is consensus of approach amongst the faiths. There's also a digest of the answers to the faith question on the 2001 census.

The EECN web site will be launched during the summer.

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EECN Churches Assembly

We are holding a 'super Network meeting', or Churches Assembly, and look forward to welcoming as many of our readers and supporters as possible at that event. Please put it into your diaries:

It will be an important chance to exchange and discuss information and ideas, please make sure that your voice is heard by taking part!

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