Action & Impact June Update

Trustees Meeting

As a registered charity, Mahabba Network has a board made up of a handful of trustees, which we call our 'Governance Circle'. Unfortunately, because of the train strikes at the end of June, we were forced to abandon our meeting in Birmingham, and go online instead. As well as the usual policy reviews and reports, we discussed some key issues about the future of the Network that we’d love to share with you.

Grassroots

One of our main discussions was about how we can continue to be as true to our network origins as possible. We want to avoid the inevitable pressures to conform to organisational structures around us, which are often top-down. Our desire is to include and involve people at a grassroots level as much as possible, ensuring that you feel your voice is being heard. So many of the examples around us are organisations functioning on a hierarchical basis, so we really want to make sure that Mahabba works differently. We aspire to being a network in the true meaning of the word and we need to keep pushing in this direction on a practical level.

Communication

Communication is at the heart of what we do as a Network. Significant events happen all the time around us, whether seen as positive or negative. The key thing we are grappling with is how do we help you and others within the Network respond? Overall, we want to give people the tools and resources that they need in order to respond, whether at work, school or in the home. We continue to discuss this and are keen to hear what you think too!

Our aims and vision

It was encouraging for all the trustees and circle holders to spend time thinking about how we achieve our aims and visions on a practical level – encouraging prayer, enabling all Christians, envisioning the Christian community and engaging with Muslisms. Thank you for the support that you give that enables us to keep working.

An encouragement

Matt, from the Promo Circle who helped organise the Network Survey has this to say:

It's so encouraging to learn that the majority of Mahabba groups continued to meet, or in many cases actually grew in size, during the pandemic restrictions. Even during a time when meeting in person was impossible, both for prayer and for the interaction with Muslim friends and neighbours which is such a big part of Mahabba's focus, people were persistent in prayer. What a wonderful testimony of faithfulness that is - and what a challenge to continue praying, and now to go out again and share life with our Muslim friends and neighbours, now that those restrictions have been lifted!

Help Mahabba grow & develop: Become a volunteer

As a relational network, volunteers have been vital to the growth of Mahabba. We currently have some gaps in our Support Circle, which help support local groups and Network activity.

For more info and for a friendly chat about whether one of these could be a good fit for you, get in touch with Simon by e-mail hello@mahabbanetwork.com

P.S.

Our local Mahabba groups are the centre of our work as a network. If you’re not connected already, why not get in touch or connect up with someone you know?