Supporting Faith Communities
How we work together
We get alongside volunteers and staff within Faith Communities, take time to listen and get to know them, working alongside them to develop initiatives and activities that respond to poverty and inequality. Below are some of the ways we can offer support:
- Community mapping – helping Faith Communities to identify the needs within their community.
- Funding – funding training (see below), identifying funding, support with funding applications and reporting.
- INSPIRE – We use the INSPIRE process to help Faith Communities identify needs (linked with) the skills, passions, interests and resources of everyone.
- Training – we offer Fit for Funding training as well as supporting Faith Communities to access Food Hygiene Training, Naloxone Training and more (see below).
- Information sharing – we keep Faith Communities up to date on new initiatives, funds, services, guidance and wider funding information.
- Advice and partnerships – we give ongoing advice to Faith Communities to help them continue to run/develop their projects and connect with local partners (including advice services).
- Volunteering – we can help with creation of volunteer role descriptions, recruitment and induction processes.
Connecting – we bring diverse Faith Communities together to build relationships and share cultural activities; we connect Faith Communities to the wider fairness agenda in Dundee and Fife; we facilitate city/region wide meetings/events/day conferences for diverse Faith Communities and key partners to explore and discuss current challenges facing local communities, and build new responses/partnerships.
Training and awareness sessions
We also run training/ awareness sessions for faith community projects and local partners, in partnership with local services. These include:
- Signposting/referring, including how to link people into money advice services using our What Do I Do If…? Money Advice Leaflet
- Cash First Approaches
- Mental Health Support
- Funding
- How to respond to and support people with substance misuse
- Food Hygiene
- First Aid
Dundee Faith Forum
Dundee Faith Covenant and Faith Forum
In 2023 we met with Faith Leaders from across Dundee, to review Dundee City Council’s Faith Covenant. At the end of a series of productive meetings, the Leader of our Council, the Council Equalities Spokesperson and Faith Leaders signed the Faith Covenant in a shared commitment to work together to reduce inequalities in our city.
We now facilitate the Dundee Faith Forum, bringing together Faith Leaders with representatives from statutory partners to ensure services and activities within our city are fully inclusive of diverse faiths.
Examples of our support
The Steeple Church Connections Cafe
For a number of years the members of The Steeple Church have run a language cafe for New Scots, which has been hugely supportive to many new to our city. Since 2021 FiCD has supported this incredible work, through funding application support; recruitment of volunteers; and helping plan and run social events, bringing people from diverse cultures and faiths together to build relationships and community.
Guru Nanak Gurdwara Dundee
When members of the Gurdwara started to regularly cook delicious vegetarian meals to be given to local people facing financial challenges, we worked with them to link them to local community food projects and key partner organisations, helped them access funding training and supported them with funding applications.
Ladies Nights
We regularly run Ladies Nights, bringing together women from diverse faith and cultural backgrounds, to connect over activities and celebrate being women of different faiths and cultures, together in Dundee. Our Ladies Nights have varied, from dancing to biscuit tasting, from sari draping to gift making.
