The Commission has been trialling some materials funded by the Society of the Holy Child Jesus and developed for us by Church Action on Poverty – a series of five workshops to examine aspects of family poverty in the UK and what more we can do about it. One pilot – covering the Skipton and Barnoldswick area has completed its run through of the materials. The other pilot is being held at Holy Rosary Church – part of the Cathedral parish of Mother of Unfailing Help. They have held two well-attended workshops so far and the other 3 will be completed by early February. In January we will review the 
feedback so far and make some adjustments to the materials in preparation to encouraging more parishes to do these workshops.
Each participant receives background material – information about Catholic Social Teaching, case studies such as the one illustrated left and other written materials to enable everyone to find out more in between the different workshops (they are called workshops because everyone coming has to do some work!). Each group has a facilitator provided by the Commission. However, we need the parish to provide a ‘champion’ to promote the workshops and get people to come along. The workshop meetings are a mixture of some short videos, PowerPoints about particular topics and group exercise to get people to explore and discuss the issues in depth – they are very interactive sessions rather than sitting and listening to someone.
During 2019 we will be rolling out this programme of workshops to a number of parishes across the Diocese.
Could you host a set of these workshops in your parish or Churches Together group?
The materials are equally suitable for use in parish groups such as SVP groups, UCM groups or Catenians as well as with older students in High Schools.
Simply email the office if you would like more information. It would be a good parish programme for Lent, for instance.