Read up on what has been happening this week on our weekly editorial.
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This week the Pew Research Group released research that presents European citizens opinions on Europe. The research, entitled The New Sick Man of Europe: the European Unionfocuses on the opinion citizens across Europe have on the European Union given the recent economic, financial and social upheavals. Much has been made in the media of the findings that only 46% of the research sample felt favourably towards the European Union.This is a drop of 22% since 2007 and can therefore be correlated to how the crisis has been handled by and across the European Union.Perhaps even more shocking only 37% felt that European integration strengthened the economy. Interesting stuff and a real challenge for European leaders to ensure the democratic legitimacy of and support to the European Union.
But there were some other statistics that were not at the front of the media analysis…60% see the gap between rich and poor as a very big problem, 77% think that the European economic system favours the wealthy and a staggering 85% think the rich – poor gap has increased in the last five years.None of this gives us any hope that we are moving forward positively from the turmoil of the last few years – rather, we are in danger of further fragmentation, further marginalisation and greater gaps in our society. But all is not bleak. Last weekend I visited a church in the UK who were looking for volunteers to help start a debt prevention and counselling programme – just like our members in the Netherlands are doing. I met a friend who is looking to be involved in a local organisation looking at practical ways to reduce fuel poverty in their local community – just as is happening in other parts of Europe.
I spoke to a new mum who was thinking about offering to visit older people in her community with her young baby to try and make conncetions between the generations in her area. Small individual steps, but all steps in the right direction to reduce gaps. We need structural change and our prophetic diaconia needs to be strong- but we also need these small steps by individuals, by local communities, by our churches- acts of service, because many small steps at the same time make a lot of noise, shake the earth beneth us and hopefully fill in the gaps.
Have a good weekend!
Heather
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Measuring and quantifying |
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This week I have been attending the European Commission/Irish Presidency conference on the Social Investment Package. The package has been launched as a series of guidelines for Member States to re-orientate their social spending as an investment rather than a cost and to develop spending on human capital and well- being. The discussions have been interesting but what has been challenging is the emphasis on showing the social return on investment in a quantifiable way. This is something we need to develop further in Eurodiaconia so we can illustrate how ambitious and targeted social spending can result in sustainable outcomes that ensure well- being across the life cycle. Put it another way, we need to show how smart investment in our work leads to long term economic savings for society as a whole.
We cannot dispute this argument but having listened today, to lots of talk about how to measure, collect data and show the economic arguments, I can't help feel we miss the human face of social investment. We need to couple the economic evidence with the real stories, the real experiential change and show how lives are transformed. Then we will be showing the economic and social returns. How do we do this? We need our members to give us more and more examples of how their work changes lives and situations and how funding is used to achieve this. We need to build up our body of evidence to show why social services work beyond economics to really develop each person. We know it is happening so let us tell our stories to everyone else.
Have a good weekend,
Heather |
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My usual working week is not spent by a lake in the middle of Sweden but that is where I found myself and it made a welcome change from Brussels! I was in Rättvik to participate in a seminar ‘Actors for Welfare’ which is a project support by the European Social Fund that is being run by the Diocese of Västerås , Church of Sweden. Gathering together representatives from parishes through the diocese and diocesan representatives from across Sweden as well as international guests from Austria, UK and Germany it was a very inspiring seminar where we reflected on how the church could be a welfare actor and how this could be done on a community level. The project is particularly focused on supporting access to employment and in up skilling staff in the Diocese to understand people’s needs in this area. What emerged from our discussions is a particular concern about youth unemployment and we started to ask ourselves if this is something that could be explored across the Eurodiaconia network.
Laura has also been on her travels this week, participating in the first conference of the Anglican Global Health Network. Held in Birmingham UK it has brought together health care actors from across the Anglican Communion to look at how to develop co-operation and practice. Laura ran a workshop on the challenges of being a faith based service provider and the implications of EU legislation on not for profit service providers. We hope that this will be the start of much more co-operation.
The week has ended on a very humbling note. Yesterday was the annual general assembly of the Social Platform of which Eurodiaconia is an active member. One of the items on the agenda was the election of a new board and President for the organization. I am very honored to have been elected President by the 47 members of Social Platform for the next two years.
Have a good weekend,
Heather |
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This week seems to have been spent getting to and from various meetings. Most importantly we have had a meeting of our Supervisory Board where we have been focusing on the Annual General Meeting amongst other topics. If you have not yet registered for the AGM please do so as soon as possible. We have also attended various meetings where we have been discussing the Social Investment Package - if you have not yet read the briefing we published last week please do so and send us your feedback. You can find a copy here.
Perhaps most significantly we have had the opportunity to share the journey over the past 20 years of our member the Ecumenical Humanitarian Organisation in Serbia. Celebrating their first 20 years of existence has been an opportunity to acknowledge and recognise the huge impact of their work in Vojvodina. Their work with Roma people is both innovative and reality-based, as has been their work with people affected by HIV/AIDS, elderly people, people with disabilities, street children and many others. From humble beginnings they have built up a highly professional organisation, rooted in the inherent values of ecumenical diaconia and embracing the diversity of the region. Catherine Mallet has participated in the celebrations along with other friends and partners in Novi Sad and has passed on the greetings of all the Eurodiaconia community for the success of their first twenty years, as well as sharing in the discussions of the next twenty years and beyond.
Diaconia should never be stagnant. We are all challenged to respond to both the changing situations in our immediate environment as well as those that take place further afield but affect us and our work. We will always be 'getting there' but we can also keep celebrating what we have achieved along the way.
Have a good weekend,
Heather |
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Our Challenge - Your Challenge |
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11 April 2013
Well this has definitely been a busy week! We have had three meetings for members and so we have welcomed many people to our offices here in Brussels over the last few days with more to come at the time of writing. We started the week with our People in Diaconia Network Meeting that focused on values based leadership, training opportunities and a special presentation on how diaconal volunteering can empower local churches. The meeting produced lots of concrete outcomes and now we need to work on how best to follow these up with effective implementation.
Following this we had our Europe 2020 seminar, organised jointly with CSC-CEC. Here we have been looking at how to strengthen the social dimension of European economic policy and the strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. We talked about how churches and diaconia could put more pressure on national governments to involve stakeholders and how we could have a more focused approach in proposing specific political actions to be taken. We were fortunate to have both the European Commission and the European Parliament with us and have their perspective as to how to engage most effectively. At the same time we were able to challenge both institutions as to their role in economic governance and why the social dimension is not nearly strong enough.
One of the outcomes of our discussions is that we need to have much more concrete evidence of the impact of our work as well as the need for our work. Data and research need to be a larger part of our work. I am very pleased that we are already addressing this and am delighted that Matilda Broström has joined our team. Matilda is our Communications and Network Officer and will be managing our various internal and external communication tools. She will also be developing our knowledge management capacity and working in the area of research, particularly with the newly formed ReDi - the International Society for Research in Diaconia and Christian Social Practice. Matilda will be in regular contact with members to gather information and examples of the impact of your work. We also say good bye this week to our policy assistant Theresa Schlage who has been with us since autumn 2012. We have very much appreciated her contribution to our work and we are sorry to see her go - but she has great adventures ahead of her!
Finally at the end of the week our Steering Group on Europe 2020 met to further elaborate our proposal to bring back the notion and practice of social solidarity in European policy. I don't want to give anything away now so watch this space!
Campaigning is important, as is getting the right information out there in the discussions. I want to finish this week by encouraging you to read a new publication from the United Reformed Church, the Baptist Church, the Methodist Church and the Church of Scotland in the UK. The lies we tell ourselves: ending comfortable myths about poverty. The report blows apart the many myths around poverty in the UK and in particular the way people who experience poverty are stereotyped and cheapened.. read it and be challenged to do the same in your country!
have a good weekend
Heather
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Wednesday, May 22, 2013
