Challenge Poverty Week 

We are really gearing up for next month's Challenge Poverty Week!

We’d love Pantries to get involved as much as you can!

Online Film Night

Who gets to tell the story of your community? And what happens when, instead of making assumptions, film-makers hand over the cameras, microphones and decisions to local people to tell their own story? That’s what our Liverpool Kensington Pantry did in the Made In Liverpool video.

We’d like to invite Pantry coordinators to come along to a special film evening as part of Challenge Poverty Week to find out… and see whether your community could also take control of its own narrative in this way.

The Guardian’s Made In Britain film series is a video journalism project, examining inequality, poverty and the challenges communities face in the wake of the pandemic. It radically changes the way community stories are told, handing the cameras, microphones and decisions to local people. It ensures we all hear from communities and people who have too often been ignored or misrepresented.

We will show two films from the series: Made In Liverpool (20 minutes) and Made In Doncaster (35 minutes). There will then be a chance to ask questions with Sue from Liverpool, Rachel from Doncaster and John from The Guardian, discussing the issues raised and the methods involved.

The Your Local Pantry team is working to support pantries who want to tell stories of their community, with local people, and this is a great chance to get some ideas and find out more. We’d love to see you there!

You can sign up here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/challenge-poverty-week-film-evening-tickets-423218607247 

Plan your own event

At the Conference, our Media Officer - Gav shared some top tips to run your own event for Challenge Poverty Week! Challenge Poverty Week in England and Wales is now less than a month away, and people’s exciting plans and ideas are starting to come together.

If you are planning an event in your Pantry and if we can help in any way, please email [email protected] to let us know.

If you haven’t got anything planned, don’t worry… you still have time, and here are three ways you can easily incorporate it into your regular Your Local Pantry work.

1) Invite:  Invite your local MPs, councillors, mayor or journalists to one of your sessions, and to meet your regulars. Show them what you do, and talk about what policy or system changes would help your community. Getting your message across in person is really effective, and if politicians are happy to be photographed in the Pantry, it can help you to engage more people on social media as well.

2) Write:  Write to your local newspaper, or to local politicians, telling them what you do and saying what needs to change. You could do this individually, or organise some letter-writing at one of your Pantry sessions, so members can all write messages, which you can gather together and send.

3) Unite:  Find other like-minded organisations in your community and work together. Perhaps your Pantry could host a local cost of living conversation, discussing what needs to change and how? We’ve seen in Manchester and Cornwall that when organisations work together in Challenge Poverty Week, they have a bigger impact. You can also unite by joining in the conversations on social media, using the hashtags #challengepoverty and following us on twitter, instagram and facebook.

Remember, the theme for Challenge Poverty Week this year is dignity, so speak up about what needs to change in your community to ensure that everyone can live with dignity, free from poverty.

Challenge Poverty Week is a chance to challenge the flawed systems that hold people and communities back, to showcase what is already being done in communities to make a difference, to hear from voices that are often ignored or drowned out, and to build support for dignified responses to the pandemic and the cost of living emergency.

Check out the resources on our website at challengepoverty.co.uk and if you’ve any questions, just drop us an email or get in touch via social media.

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