Hi, I’m Gareth McNab. I’m Director of External Affairs at Christians Against Poverty, and it’s a big week, it’s manifesto’s week. This is the week when the parties tell us in a bit more detail what their priorities for government would be, and perhaps why we should think about giving them our vote and support. They’ll come out, one by one, once they’re all in, my team and I will give them a thorough review against the things that Christians Against Poverty have been calling for, for many months and years now. And I’ll give you our campaign and community some of those headlines in a future update.
Now, the kind of things we call for at Christ Against Poverty are rooted in three main things. First, the lived experience of people who’ve been in poverty, our clients and our former clients. What does it feel like to be in poverty? What do they think would’ve made all the difference? Secondly, the experience and insight of people who support people in poverty, that’s our colleagues in our debt service in Bradford and Edinburgh. That’s our frontline teams right around the UK in partnership with local churches, rooted in local communities, their experience of being on the ground right there, sleeves rolled up. We want to take into account the kind of things we call for. And finally, our biblical mandate as Christians who are against poverty our faith has much to say about the rights and wrongs of how our society, can be created and governed about the ins and outs of poverty. I think the scriptures are very clear that it’s not God’s intention for the earth, for the people he created with dignity and agency in his image, and that together we can see an end to it. So that’s how we work out what we call for as a policy and public affairs team. So, we’ll get to manifestos.
What have I been asking you to do? We’ve been asking people everywhere to write to their local candidates to ask them key questions about poverty. We have an aim that every candidate in every constituency will be asked at least one key question about poverty. So far more than four and a half thousand emails have been created to send on to candidates.That means more than a thousand of you have already taken its actions. Thank you so much, and please do, if you haven’t taken it yet, go to capuk.org/ppc and choose one of those actions and send it on to your local candidates. It’s really easy, really quick, it goes straight to them now. And then importantly, share the action with friends and family, especially those who live in other parts of the UK. By my maths, we’ve got about 15% of the constituencies, have received this kind of action. I’ll have more detail over the course of the next week. We really want to see everybody everywhere ask these key questions. This week we have a particular focus on how to vote, not who to vote for, but how to vote and I hope that the material we’ve pulled together in this week’s update is helpful to you. Please share it widely. It is really, really important to us that nobody be deprived of their voice.
Our work with people in poverty for more than 25 years helps us understand that one of the most soul crushing pressures of poverty is the experience of having your voice taken from you or perhaps more accurately not being listened to. Our vote in a general election is one of the most powerful ways that our voice can be raised and we wanna make sure that brothers and sisters who experience poverty today aren’t deprived of the opportunity to do so through a lack of knowledge or lack of access, or lack of ID. So, thank you campaigner community for joining with us during this general election period and for all that you are doing in your local places, in your local communities. Together we can make a massive difference and ensure that our political leaders make poverty a real priority.
