Welcoming Lord Khan of Burnley
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Through our policy and advocacy work, we call for meaningful change to tackle poverty and inequality, helping people transform their lives with dignity. A key part of this involves engaging with decision-makers to share insights from our work and the experiences of those accessing our services.
As part of these efforts, we were pleased to welcome Lord Khan of Burnley, Minister for Faith, Communities and Resettlement, to find out more about our charity and our work supporting people from Greater Manchester and Lancashire.
During Lord Khan’s visit to our Cornerstone centre, we highlighted our role as a faith-based organisation offering a warm welcome to people of all backgrounds, who are experiencing poverty, homelessness, disadvantage or displacement, including through our homelessness services and our Aspire Education service for refugees and migrants.
We shared with Lord Khan the importance of ESOL (English for speakers of other languages) in helping people to positively integrate into life in the UK and in preparing them for further education and employment.
Lord Khan met with one of our ESOL students who has also gone on to volunteer in our classes providing peer support, and heard more about the welcoming community our ESOL classes have provided him with and how learning English has been a key factor in his growth in skills and confidence.
We had the opportunity to highlight to Lord Khan the demand for English lessons and the need for increased funding for high-quality provision so that more people have the opportunity to gain the language, skills and confidence needed to help them thrive in their new communities.
Lord Khan also spent time with people experiencing and at risk of homelessness, and he had the opportunity to witness some of the activities that help people to transform their lives when they access our services, and the warm and friendly environment our services provide.
The visit concluded with Lord Khan meeting Bishop John Arnold, the Bishop of Salford, and our director, Patrick O’Dowd to reflect on the importance of faith organisations providing spaces of welcome and working to create meaningful change.
Patrick said: “As well as providing a wide range of community and outreach services across Greater Manchester and Lancashire which support people to change their lives with dignity, a large part of our work is striving to address and change the issues, policies or other systems and process that drive them into those challenging situations in the first place.
“We’re really grateful to Lord Khan for his time and for coming along to hear more about our work and our recommendations for how lives could be improved for those people from our communities whose lives are significantly affected by poverty, displacement, homelessness and disadvantage.
“It was great to discuss ideas and thoughts on a range of subjects and that he was so interested in our suggestions to help people we work alongside. We look forward to continuing to engage with Lord Khan and others in national and local Government to hopefully bring about positive, life-altering change.”
Find out more about our policy and advocacy work now by clicking here