SPARK Social Justice, our project engaging with younger Catholics about issues of Social Justice, has just been awarded additional funding by Benevolentia (also known as the Porticus Trust). We are delighted to announce that they have agreed to fund a set of activities over the next 4 years that amount to a total grant of £60,000.
Prior to the pandemic, the initial project focussed on using drama workshops in educational settings to start discussions about social justice issues. In this new project we are going to focus more on the 18 -30 age group. Our intention is to recruit some people in this age group to act as ‘animators’ for a specific area in the diocese, provide them with leadership training and get them to form groups within their area.
During the various lockdowns the project went online and produced a set of videos that are available on a YouTube channel. Like so many people, we were struck by the potential for using online channels and our intention is to make this project a hybrid of in-person meetings with a significant online content and workshop element.
The funding for the initial project came to an end earlier in 2021. Originally, we were going to have a larger in-person event towards the end of the project. As this was not possible, we used some of the money saved to sponsor 5 people to attend the National Justice & Peace Network conference in July. The remaining money we have used to keep the Facebook and Twitter accounts for SPARK ticking over. Work is also now underway to develop more video resources for the YouTube channel – using the talents of two of the people who have previously been involved or who have benefitted from the project.
We are particularly delighted to have received funding over a 4-year period as this enables us to plan over a longer timeframe and build a solid foundation for continuing the work of Justice & Peace within the Leeds Diocese through a younger generation.
