Mobilizing Faith Inspired Resources
Faith has an enduring, constitutive and immeasurable value. Faith communities have a lasting commitment to developing the human person. Faith communities bring significant and unmatched competences to local, national and global efforts to end child poverty. Faith communities have a unique constitutive role as conveners’, amplifiers, participants and informed experts on matters of wellbeing and development. At the local level, faith communities are a dependable presence in community with an unparalleled convening capacity and infrastructure.
The work of faith actors, their institutions and communities is self-sustaining as it is founded on conviction and personal calling, a collective responsibility and the trust that others have in them. This conviction and sense of community provide faith actors with a sense of endeavor, commitment and longevity.
Faith actors are closely embedded and committed to local communities, work across and promote links among communities as well as across cultural and national boundaries and spur people to consider ethics including and above all, the inherent and irreducible dignity of each human person.
Faith communities have a long history of action on development and often deliver a multiplicity of services to individual and communities blighted by poverty, conflict, humanitarian and natural disaster.
These qualities make faith communities a natural location for work to eradicate child poverty. It is our cardinal role as End Child Poverty to mobilize this resourcefulness of faith actors and their communities to end child poverty.
“ As people of faith, we see the Divine Presence in every person, and thus (make it) our obligation to encourage each person, with patience and compassion, to realize the highest potential of the human heart. It is this Divine Presence – and this great potential – which are the eternal wellspring of the dignity of every child – indeed, of every one of us.” – Rev Miyamoto at the UN General Assembly in May 2010