So this is what Faith Based Regeneration Looks Like

It's the last day and it's back to Adelaide to visit the Mary Magdalene centre. Set up ten years ago it is everything a faith based organisation should.

1. Cheerful! Seven staff and 120 volunteers each committed to helping those who've reached the end of all other help, providing no fuss emergency relief and long term solutions.
2. Campaigning. They have been tireless advocates for the people they deal with feeding back anecdotes and statistics of the impact of government policy changes to the government who made them.
3. Community based. The first organisation I've met in Adelaide working with aborigines and employing aboriginal staff.
4. Connected. Building up business links with the largest law firm in Adelaide now offering over $300,000 a year of free advice. Links also with a huge number of churches in Adelaide, and of course Anglicare. Partnerships with government and NGO's all over the place. They are even teaching primary children how to pack a lunch boxes! Social entrepreneurism at its best.
5. Creative. Their craft workshop has young street graffiti artist spray painting lampshades to sell in Adelaide's trendy designer shops. The artist gets all the profits.
   They have just got $3000000 to build 24 low rent flats on the site of the old police morgue.
6. Christian. Proud of its roots and building on a Christian foundation of love of neighbour.
   

Impressive and a good formal end to my visit.

Adelaide has confirmed what I started to figure out in Yemen that churches and their organisations ought to behave more like NGO’s entering into partnerships with each other and outside bodies rather than just doing projects. There is a need for Memorandum of Understanding and formal contracts but these arise out of existing relationships not as a substitute for them.
The organic growth of initiatives like Picket Fence and The Magdalene Centre is testimony to the rightness of this approach.
Maintaining the Christian Character of an organisation or in the case of Anglicare actively seeking to restore that character brings added value and clearly underline the foolishness of pretending not to be faith based. Faith communities can clearly bring with them a huge volunteer base, a certain amount of local knowledge but also a baseline staying power.
Finally in these initial reflections I can’t help commenting on the affect of being involved in these programmes on everyone from volunteers to managers. Their faith is enhanced, their vision expanded and they find that they can do more than they ever thought possible. Surely this alone is sufficient “Added value” to encourage people to get involved.

NB to me... must look up a group called: "Common Ground" that sound a bit ace, who are big in Australia and USA buying up old hotels etc and making low cast housing.