Call for projects - Habits of Solidarity

Seeking Community based projects

Each year Britain is becoming more diverse and the rate of change in our society is increasing. This had led many to conclude that in order to retain our identity we must close our borders and in some way reverse the trend of pluralism in our society. The Barrow Cadbury Trust advocates a different approach. We promote the idea that a more effective way to expend our energy is to make pluralism work and to involve people that come to Britain in the life of our country. We contend that many of the tensions in our communities have their roots in poverty and inequality, rather than as a consequence of people settling in the UK from other parts of the world.

Inequality is not a new feature of life in Britain, some social movements have sought to tackle inequality through solidarity among those most disadvantaged, other movements have sought to identify a variety of scapegoats – most usually marked out by their difference, or those deemed to be ‘other than ourselves’. We recognise that in Britain today, the very places that have the greatest inequalities and thereby the most pressure on social resources are invariably those that are the most ethnically diverse. In our view the focus of debate should be on how communities can come together to tackle inequality and poverty rather than which group has a greater right to those limited resources.

About Barrow Cadbury

The Barrow Cadbury Trust is an independent, charitable foundation committed to funding and encouraging the promotion of social justice. We contribute to the diversity and immigration debate through our research and policy work and through our support of communities that are tackling these issues on the ground.

The Barrow Cadbury Trust is more than just a funder. We want to build lasting partnerships with the organisations and projects that we fund. Through this relationship with grantees we create opportunities for people to communicate their own stories and take the learning from local projects to influence national policy and debate.

Habits of Solidarity

The Barrow Cadbury Trust is launching a new project area. We are calling this ‘Habits of Solidarity’. To us this means the ways in which different ethnic and cultural groups can come together around issues of common cause. Whilst our communities may be disparate in some senses, in other ways we all face common problems and issues that affect us as a whole. We want to support local communities that are trying to tackle these issues collectively – in solidarity with one and another.

As such we are making a call for projects under the theme of ‘Habits of Solidarity’. Whilst we recognise that bringing people together in social settings is a valuable route to community integration we are not looking to fund this type of activity in this project and such proposals will not be considered. We are much more interested in funding projects where the community at large are drawing together to address a particular problem or need common to all.

We would also like to fund projects that may have done some of this work and are now looking at ways to sustain the solidarity that this has generated through new projects and work together. This may be economic such as in the case of The East London Communities Organisation (TELCO) where citizens from across the diverse community mobilised to campaign for a living wage for all Londoners. TELCO have encouraged hospitals, banks, universities and other organisations to take responsibility for all their staff, including contracted staff, in paying a London minimum wage of £7.20 per hour to reflect higher living costs for London citizens.

The Habits of Solidarity grant might fund people coming together to tackle a local issue such as closure of a community centre used by all communities or a project that through use of an inclusive centre have begun to build other partnerships and projects among people from different communities. An example of this might be the Ashiana Community project in Sparkbrook, Birmingham which through shared need has developed a substance mis-use project for young people and a local and accessible day nursery for local parents.

Criteria

1. We are looking for a small number of community based projects (up to 10) that will add value to our current work and generate ideas or examples that can influence the national debate. For example: