Near Neighbours
The Centre is also one of four local hubs for Near Neighbours - a £5 million programme to promote interaction in multi-religious, inner-city communities. The Revd Timothy Clapton is the Near Neighbours Co-ordinator (Eastern London).
The latest news on the project in eastern London is available on our blog
About Near Neighbours
Funded by the Department for Communities and Local Government, and administered by a new charity set up by the Church Urban Fund and Church of England, this programme has two key objectives:
- Social interaction - to develop positive relationships in multi-faith areas i.e. to help people from different faiths get to know and understand each other better.
- Social action - to encourage people of different faiths, or no faith, to come together for initiatives that improve their local neighbourhood.
Near Neighbours is not a national programme. It is focussed on east London (served by the Contextual Theology Centre) the M62 mill towns (served by Bradford Churches for Dialogue and Diversity), Leicester (served by the St Philip's Centre for Presence and Engagement) and east Birmingham (served by the new Faithful Neighbourhoods Centre).
The boroughs covered by east London programme will be Greenwich, Hackney, Islington, Lewisham, Newham, Redbridge, Southwark, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest.
Near Neighbours Fund
The Near Neighbours Fund has been set up to help local initiatives that build cross-community relationships i.e. people of different faith groups and those of no faith, working together through social action in their community to form closer relationships.
The fund makes grants of £250 - £5,000, administered through the Church Urban Fund via local parishes. More information on this is available at the Church Urban Fund's Near Neighbours website, and includes a list of eligible parishes. Our blog contains descriptions of the projects which have already received support