What do you love most about your community? Whether it’s investing in local shops, joining a project, or simply supporting a neighbour, small acts of generosity can make a big difference. By sharing our time, money, and resources, we can help the places we love thrive. What step could you take today?
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 round 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?
Rosie Venner, JustMoney Movement
Reflect
"Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper." Jeremiah 29:7 (NIV)
Pray
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.
Act
Acts for you to consider today:
| 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. | ||
| Choose to shop locally today. Check the ethics of the businesses you buy from, e.g. do they pay the real Living Wage? | ||
| 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. |
Share
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About JustMoney Movement
JustMoney Movement has a vision of a world where money shapes a fairer, greener future.
It's not easy to talk about money, but we can't afford not to. What we do with money, how wealth is shared, including through our tax system, and how money is used by investors, banks and companies, determines the kind of world we live in.
JustMoney Movement aims to be the go-to organisation for Christians and churches who want to connect faith, money and justice.
It educates, campaigns and advocates, resourcing a movement of Christians and churches to act differently with our own money and speak out about money.
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