Enough is Enough calls time on poverty

Enough is Enough campaign proposed by NICVA

The release of Towards an Anti-poverty Strategy in June was the latest instalment from OFMDFM in the process to develop an anti-poverty strategy for NI.

The issues

The voluntary and community sector was extremely disappointed and frustrated by the document.

During the first round of the consultations, strong opposition and constructive recommendations had been made to OFMDFM. Our sector had expected to see a document that would make a real assault on poverty in NI.

Instead we were presented with a tidying up exercise - the document offered nothing new and it made no substantive changes as a result of previous consultations.

Frustratingly for the voluntary and community sector, the document claimed that 103 formal responses were received to the first round of consultations - this ignored the fact that NICVA had presented a response to the consultation which was endorsed by 180voluntary and community organisations and contained a list of recommendations.

Towards an Anti-poverty Strategy still had no overall targets, no budget, no clear aims and objectives and no indication of how departments were going to tackle poverty.

A call to action

After consultation with the sector, NICVA embarked on a high profile campaign that called for the Minister with responsibility for the strategy to intervene (Jeff Rooker) and provide a ministerial vision which would set out what government wants to achieve, and a proper strategy with high level goals, concrete targets, actions and resources.

The Enough is Enough campaign called people to act: to email Lord Rooker and ask him to meet with representatives from the sector, to contact their local elected representatives and ask for their support, to endorse an open letter to Lord Rooker which appeared in all the main newspapers and finally, to attend a rally at Castle Buildings, Stormont to hand the letter to OFMDFM (see picture).

All the main political parties attended a press conference and voiced support for the campaign. 215 voluntary and community organisations signed the open letter to Lord Rooker.

A big thank you to all the organisations who participated in Enough is Enough - we wait with baited breath.

'One in a Million' is part of NICVA's celebration of one million monthly page views on our four websites. The sites were launched in April 2005 and have since received 3/4 of a million visits.

Family of sites: NICVA / Community NI / Grant Tracker / Callnet