This research was originally conducted in 2013 for the Bishop’s Action Foundation (BAF) through the Centre for Theology and Public Issues, University of Otago. In the years since then it has been used to inform and guide BAF strategy and policy through evidence-based analysis. The research was refreshed and updated...
As a catalyst for change The Bishop's Action Foundation often creates, leads or supports collaborative responses. In this action research paper we have explored the themes, learnings and opportunities that this experience has provided. In addition, we have brought together existing models of collaboration to act as comparative guidelines. We hope...
We’ve been working with a range of partners to better understand the socio-economic, cultural, environmental and spiritual issues that impact the wellbeing of rural communities. Our call to research began when we realised there was little current information or social research on rural New Zealand over the past two decades that...
We are part of a growing movement exploring the concept of spirituality, its relevance to current society and its potential impact on well-being. Existing research suggests that spirituality has a positive impact on other aspects of health and well-being, this includes our own research into spirituality and older-people which can be...
Poverty has been an intractable issue in Aotearoa New Zealand throughout this century, particularly for families/whanau with children. The tentacles of poverty spread into all aspects of daily life. While recent poverty research in Aotearoa New Zealand has a predominantly urban lens, this study focuses on living rurally while being...
In 2016 BAF partnered with the Centre for Sustainability: Agriculture, Food, Energy and Environment at the University of Otago to begin research unpacking the lived experience of rural communities. Our research was led by Dr Ann Pomeroy and began with an exploration of Taranaki communities before expanding to compare these...
BAF is a catalyst for change contributing to flourishing communities. We aim to identify the root cause of community and social issues and develop partnerships that can create lasting solutions to them. To be effective we often need new knowledge to better understand the issues we are trying to respond...
BAF, like all of organisations, have had to adjust to doing business in a Covid-19 environment. However, as well as adjusting to what we face now we are also turning our attention to what we will be like after Covid-19 - what are we learning as we all work remotely...
The team at BAF have been working on ways that we can reduce the impact our business activities have on the climate. To help us achieve this we engaged in an internal research process designed to generate a response map that showed us what we were already doping and gave...
BAF is exploring it's impact by developing an Impact Strategy. Our Impact Strategy will contain a Theory of Change, otherwise known as an impact model, which is a visualization for how the activities we do lead to positive change. Critical for BAF will be the ability to show how our...