The way ahead

It is vital we take stock every so often to consider what we want to achieve as an organisation. The National Network Meeting enabled us to do just this - talking with many frontline campaigners and project leads about what is working well and where the gaps are.

Through lively discussions, we were able to reflect on the strengths of The Clewer Initiative and the projects we believe have made a tangible difference on the ground.

The task remains unfinished and enormous in scope but with a small central team and stretched resources within the Dioceses, we must be realistic about what we can achieve in the immediate future.

We have digested the contributions that came out of the facilitated discussions and reflected further as a team, and we believe there is a desire for us to focus on the following areas:

1. High level strategic influence – raising awareness and networking amongst Senior Clergy; Global international networks and Cathedrals to increase understanding of modern slavery and encourage them to use their strategic position to join the fight
2. Regional priority Dioceses – deepen the work in regions where momentum already exists, building on what is already going on so that meaningful action is sustained. The Clewer Initiative has always worked with communities, believing that modern slavery and exploitation is most effectively eliminated at a local level, and we will continue to do this with our Hidden Voices programme.
3. Offering bespoke training – we have a strong training offer with unique resources that are useful in many different settings. We want to build on this. We will have a particular focus on our training for partners – Police; Border force; Councils; GLAA; NFU; Further Education Colleges; our training of trainers and our training of safeguarding professionals within the church setting. We also want to review and refresh our training offer which currently includes Hidden Voices, county lines, community resilience, safeguarding, rural prevention, food banks, homelessness, refugee and asylum seeker awareness.
4. Supporting grassroots initiatives – we will continue to respond to individual diocesan requests for support if the initiative contributes to the overall learning and aims of The Clewer Initiative e.g. it helps generate a new resource that can be shared nationally. We will look, in particular, to develop our special focus on schools and county lines.

We would love to hear your thoughts on our focus. Please email us on clewerinitiative@churchofengland.org if there is anything you think we have overlooked.

We look forward to the next few months of putting these things into action - please pray for us as we juggle these multiple priorities!