Find out more about the projects Jayne and Shaun have been part of below:
Monica works with Good Food Oxford, one of the local food poverty alliances involved from early on in Food Power. She found confidence through speaking out alongside other people in Food Power, highlighting the poverty that exists in Oxford but is often not acknowledged.
“It doesn’t matter what people think of you, you know, as long as you believe in yourself and you love yourself. Just look in the mirror and tell yourself that you know that you love yourself and that you are worthy. Don’t ever give up.”
Matt started using his skills as a route to social justice, when he became involved in the End Hunger UK campaign. From there, he hasn’t looked back.
In 2020, he became poet in digital residence at Church Action on Poverty, and worked with fantastic campaigners around the country to produce Same Boat? a powerful anthology of poems based upon poverty and the pandemic.
In the podcast, Matt tells how and why he became involved in social justice movements.
He tells listeners: “I’m really interested in the way that poetry can be activism and poetry can make the world a better place. I think especially in this sector, there are some things that are so unjust you feel you need to do something about it.”
He says: “There’s a very thin line between making something, and making a change, so I think it does teach us something about our agency and the ways we can make a difference in the world, the more we engage in the arts.”
Matt talks about the number of people who became creative at the start of the pandemic, turning to the arts as a vital response to the crisis. He talks also of poetry as having the power to fossilise the feelings of a particular moment, and he and Ben talk of the empowering force of the Same Boat? anthology.
Matt says: “The feedback I got was that it did mean so much to so many people, to engage in the process but also to be able to say ‘I am a published poet’ at the end of that and to know that for the rest of their lives, that that is part of who they are.”
My name is Ellis Howard. I am a Scouse actor-writer. With Church Action on Poverty, I ran a series of workshops all about how we can use our lived experiences and transform them to activism; how we can own our stories of struggle, of food shortages, to empower us and to help shape future policy and future lives.
For so long these stories, these experiences, these lives have been completely undocumented. They haven’t been celebrated in a glorious nuanced way.
Get in touch with all of those things that make you unique, and absolutely harness them, because that’s where your superpower lies.
How do we make sure everyone is included in the UK’s pandemic recovery?
How do we ensure the injustices and inequalities exposed and exacerbated by covid are not made worse still when the country gets going again?
There has been much talk of roadmaps in the past few months, but let’s also talk about destinations. Where do we want to go as a country – and how to get there? We can’t have a recovery where some speed off down the road, while others are left behind on the hard shoulder. We need to address inequality.
And, before we set off, we need to make sure all the systems we rely on are roadworthy.
Covid has caused us to reassess our priorities as a country. We have been reminded of the importance of community, the value of neighbours, and the extent to which we all rely on one another.
There are signs also that many of us want to see a more just society, with less inequality. Polling data has shown that 62% of us think the Government should take measures to reduce differences in income levels, while only 12% disagree.
What might action look like?
There is much work to be done in the UK to narrow the many gaps between those of us who are economically privileged and those of us who are not. This blog looks at just three potential steps: one simple and immediate policy decision, one medium term strategy, and one profound long-term change, all of which would help to reduce inequality.
Millions more people have been receiving Universal Credit in the past year, as a result of the economic upheaval caused by covid. It is not a great system. The security it provides is flimsy and volatile, and frequently insufficient.
Data released this year showed that people on Universal Credit were eight times as likely as the national average to be food insecure.
Universal Credit should be increased, but instead the Government is planning a cut. It intends to reduce weekly payments by £20 a year from the autumn, which would reduce many struggling people’s incomes by £1,000 a year. That would increase inequality rather than reducing it. We should all be included in the post-covid recovery, but that won’t happen if the Government leaves people without enough fuel in the tank.
The public want the Government to reduce income inequalities. It should start by abandoning this cut, and keeping the Universal Credit lifeline.
Protecting Universal Credit is a vital first step, but we need to go further. The benefit system needs to be made roadworthy. Just like other vital public services, it needs to be invested in and kept up to date, so it is fit for purpose when needed.
A fair assessment of our benefits system would likely reveal that it does not generally meet the cost of living, and that it is too detached from the people it is meant to support. Payments undoubtedly need to be increased and reviewed annually to ensure they keep pace with living costs.
More fundamentally, the DWP needs to change the way it works, to ensure the system is designed in conjunction with people who have used the system. Groups such as Poverty2Solutions and the APLE collective (Addressing Poverty Through Lived Experience) have shown how systems and services can be enhanced when people work together. We can’t hope to narrow inequalities in the UK if the primary support system is sub-standard.
There is a more fundamental reassessment that we all need to take part in, which is to address the underlying power inequalities in our society. Only if we do that will other inequalities ever be resolved.
There are inequalities in the UK, around gender, race, region, class and sexuality. Each of these linked injustices harm individuals and hurt society as a whole. Inequality violates people’s dignity and curtails their opportunities, meaning countless dreams and possibilities go unrealised, meaning the whole society always falls short of what it could be and do.
None of these inequalities is new. They may even feel entrenched, but they are not inevitable and they can be addressed.
All of them stem from an unjust distribution of power, which allows inequalities to perpetuate. We need to break the cycle by truly challenging where power lies and why, by speaking up loudly against systems that allow injustice and inequality to continue, and promoting work that redistributes power.
Initiatives such as participatory budgeting and Poverty Truth Commissions have shown what can happen when communities are entrusted with decisions, and when people meet as equals to find solutions. Such work needs to be supported, encouraged and accelerated if we are to make lasting changes to inequality.
Those are the words of Wayne Green (pictured above) who has been striving to improve society for more than 25 years.
He was first moved to act by his own experience of eviction, poverty and injustice, but he has gone on to take part in many powerful campaigns locally and nationally.
And he keeps going still today.
Wayne was the June feature in Church Action on Poverty’s 2021 Dignity, Agency, Power calendar. We asked him to talk about some of the work he has been involved in, but also to outline his own path to campaigning, his inspiration to keep going, and the lessons he would share with younger campaigners seeking to make society better.
I got involved because I had two young children. At that time, I had been made unemployed as a young man, my wife had just given birth and we were renting a flat in Worthing and when the baby was three months old we were evicted.
I was shocked because I came from a middle class background and I had never experienced anything like this before. Here I was with my wife and three-month-old baby with no work, nowhere to go, nowhere to live and I was shocked.
I put my baby in a cardboard box, wrapped up in a woollen cot sheet and we went in the back of a garage van at 9 o’clock at night and drove for 12 hours to Cornwall to live with my mother in law.
I was really angry. I was told at local authority ‘sorry, can’t help you’. That was it. I thought ‘oh my gosh, what do I do?!’
Later we moved back and ended up in Shoreham an as we moved in to this new flat we managed to rent.
This woman over the road saw us and almost adopted us. Jocelyn Underwood. She was an inspiration to me and a guiding light to me on the issue of social exclusion and poverty and the work of the church, and justice and peace, and also the issues of good local people and what can be achieved.
She basically said to me: you can do anything, and always challenge the system. She was very inspirational and she brought together a group of church goers at our local church. St Mary de Haura.
She was so giving as well but above all her connections were unbelievable within justice and peace groups locally and the church and she was eloquent, she could out-talk any politician.
I spoke at the first National Poverty Hearing. That was quite an interesting and really giant move, not just for myself but local society and national society. I think that’s something that did change society very deeply.
We started a group called Adur: Local People National Voice and we put together our first ever poverty hearing in the local area and we attracted 300 local people. Our local MP didn’t turn up but other local politicians did and Church Action on Poverty came down and gave us full support.
It was interesting to turn the dynamics round. Here we were, a group of six of us on a panel who were in poverty, unemployed, speaking to our local decision makers and local population, and that was new.
At the Hearing, Wayne described poverty as “a battle of invisibility and being blamed for society’s problems.”
That’s how I felt it and that’s how I still see it. It’s exactly what’s happening today. The experience of being part of a poverty hearing, going up and speaking to 600 leaders was quite frightening but the process leading up to it was quite empowering. It broke a lot of barriers. Being poor in the south is still going without food, as you would in the north. There’s a lot of similarities that broke down barriers.
We had a really good core group of people around us who would nurture us as well. and we found that was good and gave us access to a huge amount of people you’d never believe, like politicians, church leaders. I used to pinch myself, saying ‘Am I meeting these people, are they actually listening to me? You couldn’t believe it in some sense. We call it imposter syndrome now.
Wayne helped to organise a further local poverty hearing in Worthing, and after some persuading Sir Peter Bottomley MP attended.
He came to the meeting but I think it shocked him, the level of interest at that meeting.
The National Poverty Hearing itself, to my mind, unified the conscience of the country. It pricked the conscience and said ‘here we are’. We were opposite the House of Lords, the Houses of Parliament and we were saying ‘come over and speak to us’. Unfortunately, the leaders of the parties didn’t come but other politicians did. I remember in the afternoon a massive argument started in Parliament and I thought ‘at last, we’re having a proper debate’, which was good. It was quite empowering.
Next up was the Future Of Work report, which influenced the thinking of many politicians, including Gordon Brown when he was the incoming Labour chancellor in the 1990s.
I have a copy of that report here and I still read it today and that was very, very interesting to get involved in. You actually felt you had something really to say and people were prepared to listen and we were part of this policy group that went across the nation and brought people together and we covered everything you cover today. I was just reading the issue of flexibility. Flexibility for who? This was 20 years ago and there’s a woman in this report and she talks about flexibility with no contracts. 20 years ago!
Those with first-hand experience through Church Action on Poverty were encouraged to meet once a month or once a quarter, and put our findings together of our experiences of policy. And we covered all the areas of the benefit system, the welfare system, we covered all the areas of work, housing, tax, food, living, but most importantly how society sees you at the local level and national level.
That’s where I said what I still say today: poverty is a battle of invisibility. It’s not being seen and if those in power do see you, they will see you but not let you join in on the actual policies themselves.
Speaking “truth to power” and having agency as an actor can be difficult and can be very challenging. But at the same time, you are speaking to human beings, and human beings do have the capacity to change.
My experience over the 25 years is if I was to put all those reports together, you would see there have been some dynamic changes, such as understanding of mental health issues, understanding the importance of policy, but what we are actually seeing is a harsher world to live in if you are poor.
For example, Hear My Story is working towards a Poverty Truth Commission. You’re seeing community trying to do more themselves, but we had quite a lot of resistance that I was quite shocked about.
If I go back into my personal life… I was adopted, I also have Black African-Caribbean ancestors who were slaves. I think there’s a genetic resistance in me; I want to see a better world. I care about the world.
I’m not a truly religious Sunday person, but I believe all faiths have a golden thread running through them and I believe it is possible to change society and one must keep going on this issue.
I also get inspiration from other people. Young people give me more inspiration today. How is it that I see so many older people saying ‘ohh, what’s to be done in the world?’ and you’ve got young people ride up saying, ‘I’ve had enough’.
Jesus was a radical. He was on the outside and he saw change. Not only that, if you look at other issues of the church, its roots are deeper than politics in the community. I find the church an area that does actually listen to you. If you talk to a local vicar, you’ll probably find they’re very academic people, quite willing to listen.
I’ve been critical of the church, saying it’s become too middle class and feels too safe, and won’t want to go on the radical side of life but it’s slowly having to because of our morals and ethics. For me the church is a fundamental pillar for change.
First and foremost, your experience is proof that you exist. Secondly, you are equal to anyone else and your knowledge is probably more than the person you talk to who wants to know. Thirdly, I’d say to young people, don’t ever give up on a cause, because that’s what they want you to do, to walk away. Don’t. Be a thorn in their side. Rock that boat. Be a troublemaker! Troublemakers help change.
Believe in yourself. The experience you have is unique to you. Poverty is a battle of invisibility and you must be seen. Demand to be seen. And don’t ask for the lowest. Why should we ask for the lowest? We want the best out of our society. And everyone should have the best.
Why do I work with Church Action on Poverty after all these years? What I have benefited from is seeing change within systems and structures that others don’t see.
The support mechanisms are very important as well. People do care and having that sisterhood or brotherhood matters. You’re all different but have all experienced the pain, the hurt, the disillusionment, the exclusion of being outside society. But also, if you work hard all together, change can occur. It has to.
“We all want a better world. We have the money, we have the expertise, we have the technologies. It’s just political will.”
In this story of Dignity, Agency and Power, Penny Walters from Newcastle addresses these questions.
In this blog, Penny talks about her own experiences of campaigning for food justice. She also shares some of the lessons she has learnt along the way. And she recaps on what it is she’s hoping to achieve.
Put simply, agency is the essential autonomy and ability of each individual to say and do what they believe in, and to do what it is they want to do.
Social justice movements are made up of countless people, with different experiences and perspectives. Activists, supporters, charities, professionals, politicians and more all come together at times – and often all have a view on what should be done.
At Church Action on Poverty, we believe people with personal experience of poverty should be heard above all others. We have always worked closely with people, and we always aspire to ensure campaigns and media work are led and directed by people who have lived the issues.
In the past few years, Penny has been one of the people with whom we have worked most closely.
She and her daughter Heather have been part of the Food Power Newcastle group. They’ve been interviewed on Channel 4 News. They’ve spoken to MPs and a committee of the House of Lords. They’ve travelled to America to share their insights with international organisations. And they’ve frequently spoken up about the challenges in their community, with a view to making things better – and all while volunteering in local food projects as well.
In a previous blog in 2019, Penny said: “When we went to the End Hunger UK conference in 2018, we just expected to turn up for the conference and talk to some people, and that would be it. I did not expect all the things it would lead to but it has been very exciting and I am pleased with what we have achieved, and certainly there is more yet to come.”
Two years on, Penny shares a few tips she has learnt from campaigning, which others might find useful:
Penny and Heather became involved in Food Power through the Byker Community Trust, a housing association in their neighbourhood, when they worked together on a community survey. They met other campaigners at the 2018 End Hunger UK conference and stepped up their efforts.
Penny says the Food Power experience has been powerful for her personally, and says she is now motivated to speak for those who are rarely heard by the country’s decision makers.
This blog is the latest in our Dignity, Agency, Power series. Each story relates to the photo on that month’s page of our 2021 calendar. All photos on this page are by Madeleine Penfold. See other stories below.
Your Local Pantry, through its rapid growth, is showing an answer to that question.
Charities and community groups have wrestled with the issue for years. But the pantry network has been a beacon of hope in the past year.
58 photos: Scroll through the images of Peckham Pantry, by Madeleine Penfold.
In a compassionate society, everyone should have access to a choice of good food, free from anxiety and stigma. Achieving that, however, has often proven difficult.
We need Government action to ensure all household incomes cover living costs. But while we press for that, we also need dignified projects here and now, to loosen poverty’s grip.
The Your Local Pantry approach is proving particularly effective. Peckham Pantry features on the April page of the 2021 Dignity, Agency, Power calendar, and in the photos on this page. It is, however, part of a much larger network. In the past year, the number of such shops in the UK has risen from 14 to 43, supporting more than 9,000 adults and almost 14,000 children.
The model is simple. Anyone who lives in a neighbourhood served by a Your Local Pantry can join.
Members pay a small weekly subscription of a few pounds, and in return they can choose around £20 to £25 a week of groceries from the wide and varied stock. It’s a shop in all but name, but members can save nearly £1,000 a year compared to supermarket prices. Stock is supplied through the food redistribution charity FareShare and local suppliers in each area.
There are several differences. Firstly, and most profoundly, pantries maintain people’s dignity.
Pantries do not hand out food to strangers at moments of severe personal crisis. They create and strengthen communities that work together to reduce the risk of crisis ever happening.
They are bustling, upbeat food clubs that people enjoy all year round. They are places where relationships and communities grow, and there are many resultant benefits:
The photos in this article were captured by photographer Madeleine Penfold, who teamed up with Church Action on Poverty last autumn as part of our work to improve the way poverty is represented.
She visited the Peckham Pantry, run by Pecan. There, in the midst of the pandemic, members were cherishing the chance to see one another from a safe distance, access their food without anxiety or stigma, and keep their relationships and community going in difficult times.
Peckham members were among those to contribute to the recent Your Local Pantry impact report, along with members from around England, Scotland and Wales.
Pantries have proliferated for a couple of main reasons.
Firstly, because organisations have seen and want to emulate the difference they make. And secondly, because we’ve all been reminded in this pandemic of the importance of community and mutual support.
Local neighbourhoods can and should be at the forefront of developing pandemic responses that can work and last. Setting up a dynamic, inclusive, community-focused project like a pantry is the perfect way to start.
Councils, school trusts, churches, a GP surgery and numerous grassroots groups have embraced the approach, aided and inspired by one another.
As the network grows, pantries can continue to build dignity, choice and hope for thousands more people. And, we will be well on the way to having a better, stronger society, where nobody is cut adrift or neglected.
Baroness Ruth Lister is a member of the House of Lords, the honorary elected president of Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG), and a Professor of Social Policy at Loughborough University. Poverty links to academic research and anti-poverty campaigners’ views on the concept of poverty. The second edition uses updated research and puts a renewed emphasis on the importance of participatory research, involving ‘experts by experience’. Poverty attempts to widen public understanding of poverty and therefore will not be new to campaigners. Lister’s arguments link heavily with Church Action on Poverty’s strategy of Dignity, Agency, and Power.
In the 2020s, poverty is more salient an issue than ever. The COVID-19 pandemic looms large throughout Poverty. Lister argues that focused definitions of poverty affect political policies but asserts that poverty shouldn’t be “reduced to statistics”. She emphasises that poverty should not only be seen as insecurity but as a “corrosive social relation” that permeates the experiences of those experiencing it. Lister analyses the non-material aspects of poverty and argues passionately for:
Ultimately, Poverty calls for the recognition and respect of the viewpoints of those impacted by poverty and a rethink of the politics of poverty in order to redistribute resources more fairly.
Church Action on Poverty’s work is centred upon the ideas of dignity, agency and power, and the book reinforces the importance of all of these.
Lister hypothesises that how poverty is seen and experienced is created by a power dynamic within a society where the majority ‘non-poor’ decides the attitudes towards ‘the poor’. ‘The poor’ are created as ‘the other’ through language and images that “label and stigmatise marginalised social groups, with fundamental implications.” The main one being that they are treated differently to the rest of society. The best example of this is the 2014 Channel 4 show Benefits Street, which was criticised for reinforcing negative stigmas of claiming benefits.
The stigma of poverty causes social shame and leads those in poverty to feel disrespected. Participatory research in the UK and internationally has concluded that those in poverty are fighting to maintain dignity and respect as the experience of poverty takes it from them.
Lister asserts that treating people experiencing poverty with dignity can “increase their self-confidence and sense of agency” arguing for the recognition and representation of those in poverty within wider society and the media. Lister argues later for the importance of participation of those with lived experience in making policy decisions to shift the narrative and allow dignity and respect.
One of Lister’s main arguments is the importance of recognising the agency of people experiencing poverty, emphasising that they make their own decisions to cope with their circumstances. She claims that the acknowledgment of the agency of people living-in poverty can be another sign of respect. But she emphasises that an important consequence of poverty is the constraints of agency, either through ‘othering’ or a lack of material resources. Lister categorises four different types of agency, from the everyday to the more strategic:
2. ‘Getting (back) at’ – the feeling of being trapped in poverty and powerlessness can create anger that can be directed at the state (through benefit fraud) or families and neighbourhoods (through anti-social behaviour). But challenging the narrative doesn’t have to be negative. For example, ATD 4th World’s poetry written by ‘experts by experience’ contains assertions of dignity in the face of indifference/disrespect.
3. ‘Getting out’ – Individuals use their agency to negotiate their way through the structural routes out of poverty, usually employment or education. Lister argues the key to agency, in this case, is raising the aspirations of those who feel powerless.
4. ‘Getting organised’ – ‘othering’ processes can discourage those in poverty from activism, but Lister argues that action often takes place within communities in the form of mutual aid (which has increased during the pandemic). Lister also uses the example of APLE Collective (Addressing Poverty through Lived Experience) and Poverty2Solutions, who address the perceived lack of political action from people in poverty by creating a platform to speak out against political policies.
Lister argues government policies tackling poverty should address societal structures while also helping individuals use their agency to negotiate the pathways open to them. The emphasis of participation of ‘experts by experience’ in research and activism to challenge the ‘othering’ of people in poverty is key to the book.
Lister emphasises the importance of the use of human rights, citizenship, voice, and power as a counter-narrative to characterising people in poverty as the ‘other’. Anti-poverty campaigners use this discourse to link political narratives on poverty to wider concerns about human rights, citizenship, and democracy. Lister argues this is a potentially transformative way of speaking about and mobilising against poverty.
Our understanding of poverty can be enlarged when we frame it in this way, and it supports a focus on dignity and agency. The idea that poverty is a denial of basic human rights implies a moral imperative to tackle it and shifts responsibility to structural causes. Lister argues it is important to promote the discourse of human rights through the political action of those with lived experience of poverty, to reinstate dignity, agency, and power to rearrange the societal structures in their favour.
It is becoming increasingly acknowledged, especially in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, that the impact of poverty and how it is experienced is affected by social divisions such as age, gender, race, disability, social class, religion, and geography. Lister reasons that poverty cannot be effectively tackled until inequality is reduced both locally and internationally. Throughout Poverty, the effects of the social constraints of poverty and the individual agency of those who experience poverty despite these constraints are emphasised.
Women, black and ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, those living in deprived areas, children, and the elderly are more likely to experience poverty.
Lister maintains that “policies combating poverty need to address underlying intersecting inequalities and be embedded within broader gender, ‘race’ and disability equality and antidiscrimination strategies”. This view that anti-poverty strategies should tackle intersecting inequalities as a whole is not yet widely acknowledged but should be taken seriously. Here at Church Action on Poverty, we learnt valuable lessons through discussions on some of these themes during Challenge Poverty Week 2020.
Overall, Poverty maintains the empowerment of people in poverty is needed for them to realise their visions of society that don’t include poverty, which would lead to new ways of thinking about poverty. Lister cites ongoing initiatives from ATD Fourth World and Poverty2Solutions. This book aims to widen the general understanding of poverty to galvanise us all to recognise the importance of including people in poverty. That’s something all of us in the anti-poverty movement recognise the importance of, as we work to ensure that dignity, agency and power are better understood in the context of tacking poverty.
Jessica Waylen is Challenge Week Intern at Church Action on Poverty.
For the first time, the Government has laid bare the true scale of household food insecurity in the UK.
The Government’s own research conclusively shows that, even prior to the pandemic, one in twelve of all households in the UK were experiencing low or very low levels of food security.
The data was in the Family Resources Survey 2019/20, published by the Department for Work and Pensions on Thursday 25th March.
Most shockingly, it shows that more than four out of ten (43%) households in receipt of Universal Credit experience high or very high levels of household food insecurity. This confirms what people who have to rely on Universal Credit to survive have known for a long time: the level of Universal Credit is simply too low.
It’s worth noting that the survey asked only about people’s experiences in the 30 days before they were interviewed. If people had been asked about the full year, the number of food insecure households would have been far higher still.
It is an indictment of successive Governments that benefit levels across the board have been allowed to drop to such low levels that we have reached this stage.
Millions of families face worrying whether their food will run out before they get money to buy more; can’t afford balanced meals; skip meals or are forced to eat less than they should because there isn’t enough money for food.
The data will be invaluable in enabling the UK to better understand poverty and therefore to address it. That we have this new information is thanks to sustained pressure from End Hunger UK campaigners and others in recent years. Much analysis will come, but there are two conclusions that can immediately be drawn:
Firstly, the Government’s own research makes the case for retaining the £20 a week uplift to Universal Credit after September unanswerable. As this new report clearly demonstrates, to fail to do so would plunge countless families further into hunger.
Secondly, now that it is equipped with this data, it is time for Government to come up with a coherent plan for ending household food insecurity in the UK. That means making sure all incomes are adequate to ensure every family has enough food to eat, and that no parent or child needs to go to bed worrying where the next meal will come from.
