Church Action on Poverty - Partners to Close the Gap

When local churches engage with UK poverty they often set up projects which do great work, but which ultimately treat people in poverty as passive victims and do nothing to address the root causes of poverty.

Partners to Close the Gap will be piloted with four 'clusters' of churches in each of four geographical areas across the UK and aims to equip them to really engage with their communities by providing training, mentoring and support to enable them to explore the links between faith, spirituality and social justice, to apply their learning to tackling the structural causes of poverty in the UK and to take effective local action with their wider communities. The project aims to help churches to enable people to be agents of change and transformation, tackling the structural barriers trapping them in poverty themselves. Should this project be successful, it is hoped that the model can be rolled out to the wider Christian Community across the country.[website]