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Sent: Monday, April 13, 2015 12:00 PM
Subject: Together Network News
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 | Birmingham CEO Sleepout
Local and national charities are joining forces with Thrive Together Birmingham to give business executives the opportunity to do their part to tackle poverty, deprivation and disadvantage throughout their cities. Leading business figures will come together to sleep outdoors for one night and raise vital funds for the poorest and most marginalised. The sleepout is being held at Villa Park on Thursday 14th May, take a look at the blog.
Get involved: We are calling all business leaders throughout Birmingham to take part in the CEO Sleepouts. Get in touch with Elissa Flindell at Church Urban Fund, or call 02078981091, to find out how to participate.
Give: Sponsor Fred Rattley, from Thrive Together Birmingham, or Jon Miles, from CUF, who are both taking part in the sleepout. Click on their names to see their JustGiving page and support them.
Spread the word: Let people in your area know about this event
Pray: That many would get involved and give generously, raising important funds to continue the transforming work of the participating charities.
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| Getting By? The 'Getting By?' report, sponsored by Together Liverpool, has just been published. The report focuses on the struggle of 30 families over a year, charting the depth of poverty amongst working families in Liverpool, and through this aims to show the realities facing the UK's 5 million low paid workers. The report sets out how working people earning below the Living Wage have been driven into inescapable debt, forced to use food banks to feed their families and are suffering anxiety, and sometimes depression, as a direct result of their financial stresses. The 160 page document will be presented to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Poverty on Tuesday 14th April. Visit the website for more information or download the report here.
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| Volunteering in Churches - what's going on?
What volunteering do people do within their churches? What volunteering do they do for their wider community? Is there a difference in how each is set up and does that make a difference to how volunteers feels about what they are doing? Julia Hill, CUFs Volunteer Development Coordinator, is doing a small piece of research on volunteering to share with the Voluntary Sector Studies Network in May. If you or your church would like to get involved, the survey can be accessed here.
Individual responses are useful so do feel free to forward this survey to other people, but Julia is also keen to gather some wider church information, so that the responses can be put into a bit more context. So if you know or run a church where 10 or more people might be willing to complete the survey and a church leader would be willing to have a less than 30 minute chat about context then please let Julia know. The surveys need to be completed on or before 19th April – very soon!
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| New Parish Conference UK
Birmingham, on 2-3 October, will host this years 'New Parish Conference', an annual UK gathering bringing diverse Christians together to help re-imagine and encourage all kinds of parish-based mission and community building. UK based activists and thinkers Ash and AnjiBarker, Jenny and Andy Flannagan, Jonny Baker, Al Barrett, Mike Royal, Imandeep Kaur and Lou Davis, plus a host of others will lead sessions, workshops, worship and story telling at New Parish Conference.
The theme of this 'New Parish Conference' will be 'Placed and Linked in Hope'. It will explore in creative ways how God places us in our neighbourhoods for a purpose, but also enables us to link more broadly with others to see God's shalom come for the whole world.
To find out more please New Parish Conference brochure
To book tickets, go to the link here.
|  | #ToYourCredit #TOYOURCREDIT is the Archbishop of Canterbury's initiative to create a fairer financial system focused on serving the whole community, where everyone has access to responsible credit and savings and other essential financial services. The To Your Credit website is a great resource for finding out more about the problem of financial exclusion, and how to be a part of the wider movement of those seeking to tackle it. The ACT page of their website gives examples of different ways to get involved, with details of specific organisations to get in contact with.
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| Urban Bulletin - a resource for urban mission The Urban Bulletin is a joint information resource on urban mission and ministry, from the Christian Coalition For Urban Mission (CCFUM). The bulletins contains a roundup of stories, articles and book reviews relevant to mission in urban contexts, and contributions come from across the CCFUM member organisations. You can download the most recent Urban Bulletin no.28 here, which contains a features on working with gang members, youth work and the effects of austerity, resources for the general election, and reviews on several recently published books. You can find previous editions of the bulletin here. |  | Keeping the Faith - a resource from CUF
Keeping the Faith" is now available on the Church Urban Fund website, alongside several other resources for churches. This resource contains theological reflections on the importance of distinctively Christian community work. It looks at the principles and pressures facing community projects and the practical challenge of enacting those principles.
Visit the CUF website to download the Keeping the Faith resource.
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