LOCAL ADVOCACY

Our final quadrant of work is around advocacy. This is based on the deep conviction that change sometimes requires more than changed hearts and changed actions of individuals or small groups of people; sometimes the injustice or lack of peace we witness in our world are a result of systems which are unfair or broken. Changing these requires more than well designed projects. It requires advocacy; influencing those with power to change the unjust realities. This may involve local advocacy or broader levels of advocacy.

This is an area of work that we haven’t yet fully walked into in CAST’s new way of working, but it’s one we’re so excited to see where it leads to as we progress. We were also privileged to get a glimpse of what this could look like in late 2024. Our team and the leadership team from Savannah Park Baptist Church, who we are journeying with, attended the 2-day National Homelessness Conversation in Durban in November. This is a network of practitioners who are actively working to tackle homelessness in our cities across the country. The team from Savannah Park are feeling called to work in the space of addiction (which, in their community, is closely tied to homelessness).

Being at the Dialogue was an amazing opportunity to listen and learn from others doing the work, and importantly from people experiencing homelessness themselves. This is a key part of our praxis-based approach – immersing ourselves before moving to action in order to really understand the situation well. One of the incredible things we were exposed to here was the power of alliance-building for advocacy – both for influencing local by-laws and national policy which affects those living in homelessness. Here, NGOs, faith groups, churches, academics and homeless people worked together to influence policies and practices which are unjust. This was such a helpful time of learning for us and the Savannah Park team and we’re so looking forward to seeing where their work takes them next.