Faiths and further education - Church of England

31Chaplaincy and Partnerships96Looking beyond the college, there are options for local action andpartnerships, working with local communities and faith groups.Some colleges have been successful in generating funding forcollege and faith community partnerships. Some local potentialpartners are:• local faith communities• local LSCs, regional government agencies• church trusts and other charities• local ecumenical or multi-faith partnerships or organisations, forexample, Churches Together, Inter-faith Forums• organisations working in the social inclusion agenda, such as localauthority schemes, youth work organisations, neighbourhoodrenewal schemes and so on.97After all these options and possibilities, it is necessary to take stock,in the light of the time and resources you have available to thechaplaincy.99New chaplains do not need to be nervous in approaching local faithcommunities – either through the mosque, temple, gurdwara orsynagogue or, best, through an Inter-faith Forum or similarorganisation. Faith communities are almost without exceptiondelighted to be contacted, and usually know much more about thecollege than the college knows about them because so many oftheir communities use the college or have done classes there.100If chaplains have little experience of working with faithcommunities, a student or teacher from the college departmentsreferred to above may be able to help with initial introductions.Action points:• Ask local faith leaders to show you round their place of worshipand explain their faith.• Talk to students and teachers from ethnic minorities.Multi-faith working98Many new chaplains, even coming into relatively well-establishedchaplaincies, may find that multi-faith working is new to thecollege. Many colleges, especially at senior management level, havefound difficulty in making contact with local faith communities,even though some parts of the college (for example, language orESOL departments) may have very good formal or informalcontacts.“To be honest, my main interest in the chaplaincy is theaccess it gives us to local faith communities. Until thechaplain went in and made the contacts, we were notrecruiting 16–19 year olds to vocational courses fromthe Asian communities, because the parents didn’tvalue the courses, even though the students were veryinterested.” (Principal)