Champion

What do you love most about the place where you live? When I walk my children to school, I pass by new housing developments and older terraces, over a train line, past little pockets of wilderness, an industrial estate, corner shops, places of worship, and the famous Worcestershire Sauce factory! It’s a beautifully diverse community. People from many parts of the world have put down roots here, investing time and money in helping this neighbourhood thrive.

I love that on my daily walk, I can see signs of the ways that people care for each other and for nature. A noticeboard announces next month’s repair café at the community centre, where volunteers show people how to fix household items and mend clothes that otherwise might go to landfill. At the allotments, despite language barriers, the plot holders swap seeds, plants, and words of encouragement.

Like many communities in recent years, this place has its challenges too. The cost-of-living crisis has hit families hard. Lots of people struggle to make ends meet, through unemployment, low wages, or insecure jobs. Local shops and businesses were a lifeline during the pandemic but have found it hard to compete with the ease of online shopping.

Loving our neighbours means caring about our local economies too. When we shop locally and invest our time and money in community projects, we help protect the future of the places we love.

Friends up the road in Birmingham have inspired me to think more about where I give and invest my time and money, and how this connects to the place where I live. When a much-loved hardware and gardening shop was put up for sale in their neighbourhood, they were devastated. But that wasn’t the end of the story. The local community rallied around to raise £350k in just six weeks to buy the business and establish it as a co-operative. Volunteers from many different walks of life gave their time and skills to save the business. It’s now thriving again, and any profit from the shop goes back into community projects.

We can all play a part in helping our communities thrive, through the generous and just sharing of our money, time, and resources. What is God calling you to do?

Prayer:

Pray for businesses with a social purpose, and for those who generously support and invest in them. Pray for God to show you where you can contribute to building a greener, fairer economy.

Take a 40acts challenge today:

1. Champion a community business or social enterprise that you know has a positive impact by telling your friends or posting an online review about them.
2. Support a local business that is making a positive impact by collecting or creating some promotional materials and distributing them.
3. Start a project that your community can get involved in together. This could be a park run on a Saturday morning, a community garden, or a craft market.