The Forum’s values are:
- inclusivity;
- effectiveness;
- accountability.
The Forum’s purpose is:
- to increase the ability of faith groups to be heard and influence decision-making within the City;
- to ensure that the extensive skills and experience of local faith communities are valued and utilised to their potential.
The Forum’s aims are to support faith groups to:
- to be more effectively involved in decision-making in the City
- to work together within local communities
- to help the needs of excluded people be heard and met, and
- to improve faith awareness in Sheffield.
It is a key principle that in practice the work of the Forum will be identified through consultation with local faith communities, and that it will remain independent of the agendas of statutory agencies. An ongoing task for Faiths Forum members is therefore to identify relevant issues arising in faith communities.
The Forum’s characteristics are:
- Enabling — enabling the voice of faith communities to be heard at a City-wide and neighbourhood level;
- Inclusive — seeking to engage with all, or to bring people to a place where they can engage effectively with the Forum;
- Unified but diverse — able to identify issues which are best addressed jointly, but accepting that there will not be consensus on every issue;
- Complementary — supporting existing work and plugging gaps, rather than replacing what is already being done by other faith and interfaith groups;
- Networked — utilising existing links and seeking to open further channels of communication in order to maximise influence;
- Transparent and accountable - having open systems of recruitment and governance, and observing responsibilities to local faith communities;
- Effective — thus building up credibility with faith groups, partners and funders;
- Independent — neither created by a Government agency, nor made up of ‘official’ representatives;
- Neutral — not engaging in debating theology or faith ideologies (important work carried out by other organisations such as Sheffield Interfaith);
- Co-operative — committed to ways of working which facilitate and promote genuine partnerships among faith groups, communities and statutory agencies.