Increasing Faith Literacy 

The MHCLG Muslim Network is actively increasing faith literacy across the Civil Service, through leading by example and supporting other Networks particularly Muslim Networks of other departments and faith Networks within MHCLG to do the same. 

Our goal is to empower the faith community in the civil service to see faith as a mainstream part of their life they can be open about and share with colleagues. We also aspire to facilitate a culture where faith is never a cause of marginalisation, whether it be by people of faith or others.
In MHCLG we have good relationships with upper management whereby last year we organised Eid celebrations attended by the Faith Minister; Perm sec and Faith Champion. 

The challenges faced by Faith/Muslim colleagues have been more cultural than structural. To open dialogue and tackle this, we have planned a series of activities that engage the issues of otherisation and due to Covid19 have been successfully delivering these through digital platforms across the civil service. 

As our sessions have grown in popularity and demand we have invited other networks as our partners, in hosting these events while minimising our demands in delivering them. This is important as Faith is a more cross-cutting issue rather than a focused one. It deals with Race; Gender; Disabilities; Nationalism; Well-being and many other aspects of life. 

We recognise the need for a culture that appreciates network activity at a team level. That’s why we ran a network logo competition and worked with HR to get buy-in from all directors to award the winner £50 of vouchers from the directorate’s own recognition scheme, thereby facilitating greater local recognition of Network contributions. The New logo was announced by the Faith Champion on the first day of Ramadhan on a cross faith event we organised.