This year marks Good Faith’s 10th birthday. To celebrate 10 years of partnership and working together for positive change, friends, old and new, joined Good Faith for a Parliamentary Reception kindly hosted by Zöe Franklin MP.
We were thrilled that Kirsty McNeill MP, Minister of State for International Development in the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, could join us and share her reflections on our work. And we are indebted to everyone for making our first 10 years so memorable and impactful, and for sharing the evening with us.
Our reception was also a great opportunity to share our new brand, developed to better showcase who we are and what we do.
It was a joy to share our 10th birthday with so many parliamentarians and friends from across the globe and hear their reflections on our work together. Leaders joined us from so many projects, including Virtues of Faith, Homes for Ukraine, Muslim World League, Christ and Country, ChurchWorks, Warm Welcome and Bristol Thriving Communities, to name but a few. It was a privilege to welcome three of our Ukrainian friends, part of the Homes for Ukraine group in Bristol.
For those new to Good Faith, our work is about inspiring people to create positive change. We help create solutions to society’s most challenging problems. Problems that are too complex for any one organisation to solve alone.
During the celebration guests had the opportunity to see Good Faith’s work in action, with five ‘pop up’ exhibitions showcasing Good Faith’s work under the banner of our strapline “Together we can.” Together we can… Welcome Newcomers; Build Stronger Government and Faith Partnerships; Tackle Global Challenges; Promote Community Cohesions; and Empower Local Communities. Guests were given challenge cards to encourage them to meet someone new. Conversations flowed and new friendships were forged.
Opening our birthday celebration, Zöe Franklin, Liberal Democrat MP for Guildford and party spokesperson for local government, talked about the importance of ensuring that national policy is informed by local people and local communities, and empowering them to use their knowledge and connections to build social cohesion, very much in the spirit of Good Faith. She recognised the importance of dialogue and bridging divides and how Good Faith brings together charities, business, politicians and faith groups to meet today’s challenges together.
Zöe Franklin paid tribute to Good Faith as a “Powerful force for positive change rooted in collaboration. I want to congratulate everyone for building trust where it is often missing. We can achieve far more together, than we could ever do alone.”
Kirsty McNeill MP, Minister of State for International Development in the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office addressed the event, saying: “We are intimately connected. Our sense of neighbourliness doesn’t stop on our streets. But it should start on our streets.” Addressing everyone joining the Good Faith birthday reception, the Minister added: “I wish every single room was like this one.”
Founding Good Faith partners, Russell Rook and David Barclay reflected on the last 10 years. David Barclay shared the journey, saying that, “Good Faith started as an ‘experiment’ in the power of unlikely relationships across government, civil society, business and faith sectors. Like all experiments, they don’t always turn out the way you had imagined! We could never have known that we’d end up helping with the roll out of vaccines in the pandemic, support a humanitarian refugee response to Russian’s invasion of Ukraine, nor incubate Warm Welcome at pace in response to the cost-of-living crisis, growing into a 6,000-strong community network. These were not in any kind of grand plan, yet they are the things that we are most proud of.”
Russell Rook shared three lessons Good Faith has learned over the last 10 years. First, the power of relationships, both the divine and the human; transformative things that happen when we work together. Secondly, Russ talked about ‘real hope’, and how this helped him personally and professionally. “Good Faith is an exercise in real hope, the hope that comes from doing things together; something you can build on and that gets stronger and stronger over time.” Lastly, Russ talked about ‘great love’. Drawing on a recent trip to India for Good Faith, he reflected on the words of Mother Teresa – “We can’t always achieve great things, but we can do small things with great love.”
Finally, Russ added: “Thank you for sharing our 10th anniversary celebrations, and for putting your faith in us. We cannot achieve anything without you. Together we can be braver, powered by real hope and great love.”