The self-styled "quiet man", the secretary of state for Work and Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith, is proving himself a passionate man when it comes to tackling poverty in our communities.
Not everyone agrees that his "early intervention" strategy – targeted at poverty-trapped mums and toddlers – is the right thing to start with. Nor that the cash involved is anything like enough, or that his scheme will be delivered by the best agencies. Some indeed will balk at the benefits that will accrue to private investors. Others will argue the intervention that's most needed is one that's being abandoned – during pregnancy, when mothers-to-be had hitherto received support to ensure a healthy diet and the best possible start in life for their children.
People like me, following Harvard professor Robert Putnam and David Campbell's recent study of the contribution that faith communities make to societies, American Grace, are wondering why there hasn't been more dialogue with a faith sector, which reaches the most disadvantaged in every community in a way few networks can. Having said that, the secretary of state's attention is at least focused on the right area.
What's needed now however is not more thinktank, top-down work on what we should do for "the poor", but rather a sea change in our approach to how citizens engage in their own redemption.
The coalition government has begun this but in an unbalanced way. They're strong on civic fiscal responsibility. No hand-outs. No free lunches. People contributing where they are able. They know that some of their core voters – as depicted by the tabloids – loathe the so-called "sponging classes".
But they're not at the same time enhancing the non-material aspects of civic responsibility, which are actually the most important. My experience of living alongside the disadvantaged in Blackburn, Cape Town and London's Burnt Oak teaches me that what people want to contribute most is their creativity.
This month a young American, Rye Barcott, has been in London to launch his already well-received non-fiction title, It Happened on the Way to War. It tells the story of how a marine preparing to go Afghanistan and Iraq went to live for a summer in Kibera, Nairobi – Africa's largest slum community – and discovered not only how poverty fuelled terror but how its citizens already understood the politics and the economics of their situation. They just needed someone to walk with them. It didn't take much cash.
Barcott made one strategic intervention of $26 – given to a nurse to set up a vegetable-selling business – that within a year was funding a small clinic, now a leading health-care facility.
More crucially what he gave was time. Time to listen to citizens' ideas, time to help them work out for themselves how to unlock the support they needed.
At one end of the parish I serve there's a part of Burnt Oak with very high levels of deprivation, but with a creativity and energy that its citizens want to be harnessed.
They deserve the "participatory development" found in Kibera. Duncan Smith is right, though not in the way he supposes. It's not all about money. No, it's about listening and giving people the gift that costs the most: time.
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