Tackling inequalities
Tackling inequality is at the heart of all we do. We particularly focus on:
- Gender justice
- Addressing the legacy of colonialism and slavery
- Listening to Indigenous perspectives
- Youth empowerment
The key tools we use are:
- Asset-Based Church and Community Transformation
- Reimagining Our World Together
- Agents of Change
- Providing resources and sharing learning
Our work on building resilience, safeguarding creation and people on the move all involve reducing vulnerability and contribute to avoiding further inequality. Advocacy is woven through all these areas of work. Scroll down for more….
A woman living in a camp for Internally Displaced People in North Darfur, expresses her sorrow over the increase in rapes in the area. Photo: UN /Albert Gonzalez Farran (2012).
What we work on
Gender Justice
Click here for our gender justice page.
The Anglican Communion’s director for gender justice, Mandy Marshall, is an integral part of the Anglican Alliance staff team. Tackling gender inequality is a lens the Anglican Alliance uses in all our areas of work.
Key resources on gender justice include:
- ‘God’s Justice: Theology and Gender Based Violence‘, which is available in four languages.
- ‘Domestic Abuse and Covid-19: how churches can respond’, which is available in seven languages.
Addressing the legacy of colonialism and the slave trade
The trans-Atlantic slave trade and colonialism continue to cast long shadows, deeply impacting attitudes, policies and people’s reality and lived experience to this day. Heeding the resolution of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC18 4f), the Anglican Alliance is working to address the legacy of these twin evils.
Find out about our work on Addressing the legacy of colonialism and the slave trade here.
Listening to Indigenous perspectives
Indigenous people, including many Anglican Indigenous people, are living with injustice and vulnerability, but they are also offering wisdom and solutions.
Find out about how the Anglican Alliance is listening to Indigenous voices here.
Youth empowerment
Young people were particularly hard hit by the pandemic. The Anglican Alliance is connecting and equipping churches to empower youth through ABCCT approaches, including the Agents of Change course.
The Anglican Alliance has also invested in rebuilding the Anglican Communion Youth Network (ACYN), especially through our Caribbean Facilitator, Clifton Nedd. We work closely with the ACYN: the ACYN’s executive council acts as a Council of Youth for the Anglican Alliance and one of its co-facilitators sits on the board of the Alliance.
The Anglican Alliance is currently rolling out Agents of Change through and with the ACYN, equipping emerging Anglican leaders for local church and community transformation.
We are also working with the ACYN providing training and capacity development on gender justice.
Youth empowerment through Agents of Change in the Caribbean
Links
- Reimagining Our World Together Contextual Bible Studies
- A Better Life Together (Anglican Alliance disability resource)
- Disability and Emergencies
- Gender and Emergencies
- Domestic Abuse and Covid-19 – how churches can respond
- Climate Change and Gender Justice
- Safe Church: How to Start Guide
- Safe Church: Responding Well When Abuse is Disclosed or Reported
- Safe Church: Dealing With Allegations of Abuse
- Safe Church: Guidelines to enhance the safety of all persons—especially children, young people and vulnerable adults—within the provinces of the Anglican Communion
How we do it
Asset Based Church and Community Transformation
The Anglican Alliance promotes and shares asset based approaches to church and community transformation which bring deep and lasting change to communities. These approaches address the root causes of poverty and empower marginalised people.
Re-imagining Our World Together
Re-imagining Our World Together is a set of Contextual Bible Studies which seek to set up a conversation between the Anglican Marks of Mission and the Sustainable Development Goals. They aim to help Anglicans throughout the Communion explore both – always through a deep engagement with Scripture and always rooted in the lived reality of the participants. The Bible studies were developed by the Anglican Alliance at the request of the Anglican Primates and written by a group of theologians and development practitioners from across the world. Click on the image above or click here to view the resource.
The Sustainable Development Goals
In 2015, the world launched a set of goals which would “leave no one behind” in their ambition of ending poverty and hunger, ensuring healthy lives, education, clean water, sanitation, energy and decent work for all, while caring for the environment. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide “a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future”, which all 189 member states of the United Nations signed up to.
The Anglican Communion and the SDGs
Across the Anglican Communion, churches and agencies have long been engaged in many and varied activities working towards sustainable development, ending poverty, protecting creation, tackling violence and injustice—activities activated by God and pursued for the common good. Such action is grounded in our Christian faith and articulated in the Anglican Marks of Mission. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that many Christians discern “the footprints of Christ” in the Sustainable Development Goals, with their commitment that no one is left behind.
In May 2019, the Anglican Consultative Council passed a resolution recognising “the urgency and global significance of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals” and encouraging all “Member Churches and agencies of the Anglican Communion, in the context of their own holistic mission, to continue and extend their contribution to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through both delivery and advocacy.” (Resolution A17:11).
The world in the 21st century is a place of profound inequalities. Chronic poverty and injustice limit people’s capacity to flourish. The Anglican Communion can help change this with intentional, strategic action that is grounded in our faith and the Five Marks of Mission and inspired by the transformative vision of Agenda 2030 for sustainable development.
Read more: the world in the 21st Century
Agents of Change
Agents of Change is a programme of the Anglican Alliance to help Anglicans anywhere in the world tackle poverty and bring about transformation in their local communities.
The course equips participants with the skills and knowledge needed to set up a development project in their local community. It looks at every stage of the process – from coming up with an idea… to planning… to managing a project… to monitoring it and evaluating it.
The course teaches both practical skills (such as how to write a budget and how to do a risk assessment) and values (such as being inclusive and being transparent).
Click here or on the image above to find out more.