PRESS RELEASE
22 June 2006 - for immediate release

Tooled up and ready to go – The Baptist Community Value Toolkit

Today sees the launch of the Baptist version of the Churches Community Value Toolkit, which provides a baseline for projects to assess their work in the local community.

The toolkit was developed by the Church Urban Fund in conjunction with the Commission on Urban Life and Faith (CULF) and the Churches Regional Commission for Yorkshire and the Humber, with special input from the Revd Graham Brownlee of the Yorkshire Baptist Association.

The toolkit aims to remove the frustration experienced by churches and community groups, which are often overlooked, undervalued and denied funding, when trying to present their activities. It has been specially adapted for Baptist churches after the original version was created last month in light of the CULF Faithful Cities report.

Tim Bissett, Director of Development and Regeneration for the Church Urban Fund, says, “Coming so soon after the launch of the Faithful Cities report, this Toolkit will be incredibly useful for Baptist churches across the country. It not only helps a group to measure its financial contribution to the local community, but also highlights the distinctive role of faith-based social action organisations in tackling local poverty.”

The toolkit enables projects to identify and compare over time their level of community interaction, the financial contribution to the community their activity makes, how effectively their community building is used to meet the needs in their area and the distinctive contribution that they make. They will also be able to put a financial value to their work.

The toolkit will help provide evidential information to support funding applications and other proposals that require a more rigorous approach to the assessment of a particular activity.

In an environment prompted by government approaches to evaluation, the toolkit will also help projects to account for their work in terms of their output and outcomes. It supports the recognition of faithful capital as a vital aspect of social capital within communities.

Fran Beckett, Chief Executive of the Church Urban Fund feels strongly that more needs to be done to recognise the work of faith communities. “We worked with the Commission on the development of the toolkit because we see the enormous contribution to the life and well-being of our society that faithful capital makes. Faith communities often stay working in areas through all the ebbs and flows of government initiatives and funding. It is very undervalued and we feel it is important that every effort is made to support the people and projects, often working in very poor areas day in day out, to be able to have their work recognised and supported.”

The Toolkit will be available at www.cuf.org.uk from the beginning of July. For media enquiries about the Toolkit please contact: Sara Stafford Williams at sara.stafford-williams@cuf.org.uk or on 020 7898 1668 or Minu Chowdhury-Westlake at minu.cw@cuf.org.uk or 020 7898 1654.

Notes to Editors:

1. Church Urban Fund has worked for the last 20 years supporting churches and communities who are involved in social action in the poorest areas in England. We work with people making a practical difference in the lives of those around them.

2. Our Chief Executive and our funding department are available for interviews on request.

3. For more information on the organisation’s activities please go to www.cuf.org.uk