FbRN is involved in A Year of Service

Why ‘A Year of Service?’

Acts of service as signs of faith are common across all the religions. People may offer service as a group or individually. People choose the kind of service they offer, it may range from giving money or goods through to giving time to assist or run a social action project.

What is important in all the faith traditions is that giving service is a way of expressing faith.

FbRN’s role

A Year of Service celebrates this innate shared response to faith. The Faith Based Regeneration Network is pleased to be part of the organisation of this project. We will be promoting the twelve different festivals that are the stimulus for shared social action. We shall be encouraging all our members to take part by joining with people of other faiths to share their festivals through local social action.

We will be working with the steering group to ensure that the Year of Service is successful, and that the learning can be used to encourage more shared acts of service in local communities. Our staff and trustees won’t just promote a Year of Service, we shall all be involved in giving service in some way.

Partnerships – Health Mela, Gujarat Hindu Society Preston

What is faith based social action?

Faith based social action happens when people of faith work together, often with others outside their faith community, in order to achieve real and positive change within their local community, or in wider society.
It springs from the application of spiritual principles, for the betterment of society and the improvement of people’s lives.

It can take many forms ranging from working with particular groups of people to whole community activities. It can focus on social, economic, environmental or political projects. What’s important is that it is locally based, it gets things done, it brings positive change that people want and those involved are motivated by faith, or happy to work with people of faith.

Springfield – social action across faiths at the Springfield Centre Birmingham

How can we be involved?

The Year of Service website will give you plenty of ideas and links to organisations to help you plan an activity around a particular festival.  The range of activities is limitless so here are a few questions to help you plan what is realistic for your group to do:

Which festival are you celebrating?

This will help you to decide what kind of social action is appropriate and which faith groups to work with.

How much time have you got?

It is better to do something small and do it well than to be too ambitious. Remember, planning the action can take longer than doing it. It is also worth thinking how the event can be continued, or repeated next year, so it is not just a one off.

Who wants to join you?

A small group might run a coffee morning for isolated people in your area. A bigger team might plan a lunch party for the same group. Ideally your group will include people of different faiths.

How can you resource our activity?

More than just money, you will need people, you may need a venue, you may need to promote the event to get helpers and participants. Don’t let money put you off; a huge amount can be done with very little resource. For more support advice and ideas go to: A Year of Service

Don’t forget to let A Year of Service know about your event so it can be included in the final celebration of the year.
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 From Pratik Dattani, Director of Economic Policy Group Ltd.
Sewa is clearly a good thing, but how good is “good”? I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently.

I work in an industry called Economic Consulting. I do the number-crunching for lawyers in big litigation cases, or I advise corporates on how certain regulation may affect them.

In the middle of an extended economic downturn, these issues have become more important than ever for clients.

But what becomes even more important for society is the effect this downturn is having on the least fortunate in society. Every morning when I arrive to work, I see the number of homeless people on the street increase – I’ve lost count of the times I’ve seen a grown man, on a cold winter’s morning, huddled between a torn sleeping bag and a cardboard box mattress, using a stack of discarded newspapers as his pillow.

And so I know that helping those less fortunate than us is a good thing – there are plenty of unsung heroes in London who, without asking for personal recognition, volunteer tirelessly in soup kitchens and shelters to help make a better, more equal society.

That’s what sewa is to me – it is selfless and altruistic. I do volunteer in various community activities and I enjoy them, but for me, the most fulfilling sewa is where I can use the skills I’ve learnt in a environment where I’m surrounded by lawyers and financial analysts and apply them for the benefit of society.

That is how the idea of producing a Social Return on Investment (SROI) analysis for Sewa Day came about. We all know sewa is good, and helping others less fortunate is a noble cause to aspire to, but at what cost? Setting up a direct debit to give money to charity is easy, but giving up your time means parting with a more previous commodity.

My task was to put a number of on the value of all the volunteering activities that happened as a direct result of Sewa Day 2011. But then how do you measure the value of providing company to pensioners at a community centre? What about the impact of organising fun activities for terminally ill children in a hospital ward? That’s where the challenge lay.

The SROI study, which fellow economist Sam Juthani from HM Treasury and I completed on behalf of the City Hindus Network (CHN), showed some great results. Overall, our analysis showed Sewa Day 2011 provided approximately £4.40 of net benefits to Britain for every £1 expended on it, which is approximately £400,000 of monetised gross benefit. We think this could be a significant underestimate, because there were several qualitative benefits we could not reliably calculate. It was our act of sewa and therefore done in a personal capacity outside of our normal work. Both Sewa Day and the CHN were very clear from the outset that the study should be independent – that is where the most value with a study like this lies.

The results are ones I draw a lot of comfort from – Sewa Day 2011 was of great help to British society, and the numbers, for the first time for an initiative like this, proved it.

Download the Value of Sewa Day report here.