A community garden visit during the 2024 Religion & Climate Futures adult summer school (Flora Rustanova for the LSE). Learners included two F&BF team members.
We are pleased to share the official announcement for a new collaborative project that spans the research–practice divide:
Thanks to National Lottery players, the Believe in Climate Action project (BELIEVE) has received £1,452,709.20 over 4.5 years from The National Lottery Community Fund, the largest community funder in the UK. Led by the Faith & Belief Forum, the project will encourage and support more young people from underrepresented communities to engage and lead on climate action at both the local and national level.
A multi-year collaborative project, BELIEVE is funded through The National Lottery Community Fund’s Climate Action Fund. The Climate Action Fund is a long-term commitment to support communities across the UK to act on climate change and involve more people in positive environmental action.
The BELIEVE approach
Beginning in London, the Northwest, West Midlands and East of England and expanding to other English regions from Year 2 onward, the project will engage underrepresented groups including young people from minority faiths, migrants, multilingual and ethnic minorities. It will do this through values-driven, community-led climate action, pioneering a different approach to motivate people from faith communities to engage in climate action.
Support for young people will be delivered by working with schools as community hubs to run after-school climate programmes; training and mentoring paid young people to co-lead school-based projects and connect them with regional and national networks; and fostering collaboration between local environmental leaders, regional organisations, and policymakers.
A profound challenge
For this project, F&BF is partnering with the University of Cambridge, with the Cambridge Interfaith Programme providing evaluative expertise. Together, the project team seeks to make space for diverse voices and enable transformational change.
Cambridge research lead Dr Anastasia Badder explains: “Approaching the climate crisis as a political hot potato or technological task is getting us nowhere. We need to face up to the moral challenge, and that means paying real attention to value systems and to who gets a voice in decision-making spaces.
“The BELIEVE project is lifting up young people’s voices and imaginations to co-design meaningful interventions. Bringing an ethnographer’s perspective to that, I will be doing my best to discern what kind of attention really makes a difference. How can young people of faith make better futures for the planet?”
Amy Ark leads Education and Learning programmes at the Faith & Belief Forum. Reflecting on the project’s opportunities, she said: “We know that there’s a mismatch between the diversity of the UK population and those employed in climate action spaces. We also know that young people have a profound interest in mitigating the worst impacts of climate change.
“For schools, hosting a BELIEVE climate action club is a great opportunity to build relationships with environmental and sustainability groups, both locally and through the wider network. The clubs offer meaningful enrichment, developing leadership and social action skills and empowering students to become local changemakers. Participants will also be helping build a national model for inclusive climate action.”
Working in partnership
The project is built on a strong collaborative infrastructure. BELIEVE was initiated through a co-design process, building on discussion at annual interfaith youth summits co-convened with the LSE’s Religion & Global Society Research Unit. The plans thus combine partner organisations’ strengths and networks with the vision, enthusiasm and voices of diverse young adults.
The project has three core workstreams: work with schools, recruitment and training, and knowledge exchange. All workstreams will bring on board additional expertise to enable the best possible learning and dissemination.
For example, the team behind the AHRC-funded Public Map platform are due to help the project team adopt and adapt a flexible approach to community-led map making. For BELIEVE, this map-based approach will enable local information gathering and analysis, generate rooted case studies, and help different stakeholders navigate project learning. BELIEVE has also secured assistance with policymaker engagement (from the LSE), along with pledges of support from Faith for the Climate, climate change charity Ashden, and the Youth Environmental Service.
Project stakeholders will have access to a monthly Community of Research and Practice (CoRP) meeting online to discuss challenges and opportunities encountered in the “faith + ecology space”, run by the Cambridge team.
Next steps
Recruitment for the first cohort of interns is now underway, with induction set for the second half of August. Work in schools will begin during the autumn term.
Project learning will be recorded and shared through a dedicated website (under construction).
BELIEVE is also building a wider network of potential delivery partners, with expertise relevant to whatever climate action projects emerge from the co-design process. There are small pockets of funding available to support input to training as well as honoraria for project mentors.