Please continue to pray for the relationships and connections built across Sheffield and the Network after the Big Dress.

There are still prayer points in the creative calendar!

Do you want to give more time to speaking out for justice? To encourage more prayer and campaigning? To give practical and pastoral support to young people in the SPEAK network?

Getting ready for the SPEAK Network National Gathering

Getting ready is the down to earth phrase for mobilisation as the dictionary definition of this word shows: 1. The act of …organising and making ready for use or action… 2. The act of assembling and putting into readiness …

Our society is full of things that de-mobilise: people are increasingly isolated and disempowered, feeling unable to make a difference to the problems we are inundated with through the news and the media. The injustice and inequality we see in the daily existence of our neighbours around the world is an emergency (both physically and spiritually), and we must be in readiness to act as instruments for change!

Lucy Smith on the Time To Turn gathering

Time to Turn is a movement of young people in the Netherlands who want to lead a sustainable and just way of life, based on their faith in Jesus Christ. They provide each other with study materials, campaigns and inspiration, and together speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. Time to Turn started as an educational project about 10 years ago, but is now a network, and this was their third network gathering.

Josiah from Edinburgh SPEAK on lobbying MEPs on EPAs (acronym-tastic!)

After having learned about Economic Partnership Agreements at a conference this year, two members of SPEAK Edinburgh and two from People and Planet decided to attempt to lobby their MEP about them. It was through this discussion of what to say to him that I joined the group. The meeting was quite easy to arrange although, like most MEPs, our representative’s schedule is quite packed travelling between Brussels and Scotland twice a week. But luckily we were given a meeting with Alyn Smith quite quickly.

This is a totally amazing opportunity to travel round the country and see what the SPEAK network is doing! Your role would be to communicate between groups and links, support, encourage and resource young people as they engage with justice issues and campaigning. You will learn new skills as you give talks, training, facilitate workshops and benefit from a deeper understanding of God's heart for justice and the ethos of SPEAK.

Andy Flannagan, a long-time friend and supporter of SPEAK, has released a new book called 'God360', featuring 120 devotions accompanied by experiences to give them a context or an active outworking. You may find yourself praying for your area from the top of a multi-storey car park (hill), or washing your neighbour's car (feet) with Jesus. The book contains several devotions related to justice and justice issues, and comes highly recommended.

"...hijacks the entire devotional genre in the name of Jesus... join Andy on a 360 degree encounter with prayer that is disturbing, demanding, occasionally funny and above all just devastatingly normal." (Pete Greig, 24-7 Prayer)

To find out more and to get a copy of the book visit the God360 website.

SPEAK's Big Dress wowed the town of Cambridge during four days of colour, fun, justice, faith and glorious sunshine from 16th-19th June 2006. We're currently compiling a full review of the event, but here you can see some photos of the festival. Thanks to Paul Williams for taking the photos and posting them.

Two weeks after Jim Wallis, a prominent Christian leader from the US, compared Gordon Brown to the prophet Micah, the SPEAK network re-enacted the eye catching actions of another biblical prophet outside the House of Commons to send a message to the Chancellor over the need for trade justice and further debt relief.

As they lay down under their symbolic burdens in Parliament Square, 150 student campaigners from the SPEAK network sent a powerful visual message to the government. They were imitating the actions of the biblical prophet Ezekiel, who lay on his side symbolically bearing the sins of Israel for 390 days. Through their action, as a culmination of their campaigning as part of MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY, SPEAK members repented for the burdens people in poorer countries suffer because of unjust trade rules, unpayable debts and insufficient aid. They later heard messages from the three main political parties about these issues, and lobbied their MPs about concerns relating to the Company Law Reform Bill that is currently going through Parliament.

Earlier this week Sarah McCarthy-Fry MP tabled Early Day Motion (EDM) 697: Modernising Company Law. This is a vital opportunity to show public support for corporate social responsibility in parliament, and add momentum to SPEAK's Big Dress Campaign. SPEAK as part of the CORE Coalition wants to build significant support amongst MPs for EDM 697 and for its current campaign to make companies more accountable and strengthen directors’ duties. This will focus on the UK Company Law Reform Bill due to be tabled by the Government later this Autumn.