Twelve organisations from across South Tyneside joined together on Jan 30th to speak out with one voice on issues of poverty and homelessness.
The event called ‘Making Ends Meet' marked the churches ‘Poverty and Homelessness Action Week' and the beginning of a year long campaign to Make U.K Poverty History. Church Urban Fund partnered with Churches Against Poverty and Housing Justice among others for the week, which aimed to raise the profile of poverty and homelessness in the UK.
The event was held at The Centre for the Community on Westoe Road and was attended by 80 people.
Revd Canon Caroline Dick (vice-chair of Churches Together South Tyneside) chaired the lunchtime event, and in her opening comments quoted from the psychiatrist Oliver James. In his best selling book AFFLUENZA he describes western materialism as a virus that has led us as a society to have the highest rate of mental health problems ever recorded. He argues that one of the best ways to ‘inoculate' ourselves against AFFLUENZA is to give more of our time and attention to those who are struggling to Make Ends Meet, and consciously get alongside them, because, as all faiths remind us, it is when we rediscover our need for one another, our inter-dependence, and our inter-relatedness, that we become healthy, healed and fully human.
Participants watched, and then discussed a 7 minute DVD produced by Oxfam and the U.K Poverty Programme called ‘Are you bothered?' This explored peoples responses to the word poverty.
Shelagh Barton - Director of the Credit Union, gave a statistical overview of poverty in South Tyneside and explored the issues surrounding debt.
At the heart of the event were presentations from four people who spoke of their personal experiences of trying to Make Ends Meet.
- Pat Sweet from OPTIONS talked about her experiences of domestic violence.
- Ximenes Flores described her journey from being an asylum seeker to getting refugee status, and the support she got from the churches STARCH project.
- Zoe Gibson from South Tyneside Churches KEY PROJECT spoke about her experiences as a homeless young person.
- Alf Dummer from HOSPITALITY AND HOPE described the problems that the guests who come to their soup kitchen face on a daily basis.
The presentations were followed by round table discussions that identified the key issues that were raised, as well as exploring possible solutions.
The findings from this session will be written up in a report that will be presented to politicians in the autumn. A DVD featuring speakers at the event will also be made available to any groups wishing to use it.