Celebrating Let’s End Poverty

Let’s End Poverty, a project funded by the Methodist Church for two years, will finish its work at the end of May 2025.

Since October 2023, Let’s End Poverty has united a diverse range of voices behind a shared, positive, vision-filled message that poverty in the UK can and should end. A collaboration between individuals, churches, charities and unions, Let’s End Poverty aimed to make ending poverty a primary issue at the 2024 UK General Election, by increasing pressure on political leaders.

As the two-year funding comes to an end, campaigners, grassroots leaders, organisations and faith leaders are coming together to celebrate and give thanks for everything that Let’s End Poverty has achieved.

Let’s End Poverty has built up collaborations between more than 80 groups and organisations. By resourcing events, campaign actions, creative arts funding and training, the project has enabled hundreds of leaders and thousands of individual activists to take part. Campaigners have spoken to their communities, taken action with their churches and faith groups, and reached out to local politicians, candidates, MPs, government Ministers and event the Prime Minister. Through the Artists for Change programme Let’s End Poverty has funded art projects to spark conversations, including the Dreams & Realities exhibition and more than 15 small arts projects in local communities. The Neighbourhood Voices project has amplified the experiences of communities at events across the UK. The Dear Prime Minister campaign bought the experiences and expertise of people bringing experience of the struggle against poverty to the Houses of Parliament.

Many local Methodist Churches have taken part in events and actions through Let’s End Poverty, joining their voices with others to demonstrate their community’s commitment to the vision that poverty in the UK can and should end.

Camden Methodist Church in London was one of 50 churches across the UK to put up a banner outside their building saying ‘Let’s End Poverty’. During the general election, they hosted the Dreams & Realities Exhibition, sharing the stories of people struggling against poverty with their community. You can hear more about their story here.

The Huddersfield Methodist Circuit Craftivism Group showed their interactive ‘Webs of Poverty’ display at hustings events in their area. They said “The aim is to create an interactive exhibition which can be shared within the wider community, encouraging participation from people of all different backgrounds to join the campaign to end poverty.”

Thousands of people have taken part in action through Let’s End Poverty, and thanks is being expressed to anyone has hosted or attended an event, engaged with your election candidates, written to your MP or joined a campaign for the very first time: you have made a difference. Throughout May, stories from across Let’s End Poverty will be shared online.

An event of celebration and thanksgiving will be held online on Thursday 22nd May 7-8.30pm, where stories from across Let’s End Poverty will be shared and celebrated. You can register to join this event here.

As Let’s End Poverty finishes, work across the Methodist Church to respond to poverty continues in many different ways. In a recent letter to government Ministers, the President and Vice-President of the Methodist Conference joined with more than 30 multi-faith leaders urge the government to be bold and ambitious in its forthcoming Child Poverty strategy, saying that levels of poverty in the UK “cannot be acceptable” and that “there is an urgent moral imperative” to tackle poverty.

The Joint Public Issues Team continues to speak and act for a “society where the poorest and most marginalised are at the centre”. You can engage with their campaigns and actions here.

To get updates about future campaigns and events on poverty, sign up to JPIT’s newsletter here.

The Methodist Church is a supporter of the Guarantee Our Essentials Campaign, calling for a social security system that provides enough income to cover life’s essentials. You can get involved with the campaign here.

New Christian communities amongst economically marginalised people are being nurtured and strengthened through the work of Church at the Margins. You can find out more about this here.

The Methodist Church has five priorities for justice to focus our work as a justice-seeking Church, one of which is tackling poverty and inequality. You can find out more about the work on this here.

You can read the full statement about Let’s End Poverty finishing, and some FAQs, here.