BISHOP of Ely Dr Anthony Russell, is challenging poverty as this year s Lent Appeal. The initiative has been launched by the Church Urban Fund to tackle poverty and injustice and bring lasting change to people living in the poorest neighbourhoods in the r

BISHOP of Ely Dr Anthony Russell, is challenging poverty as this year's Lent Appeal.

The initiative has been launched by the Church Urban Fund to tackle poverty and injustice and bring lasting change to people living in the poorest neighbourhoods in the region.

Dr Russell says most visitors to Ely diocese see only the famous university and the idyllic rural scenery of Cambridgeshire and not the "pockets of multiple deprivation where people in rural and urban communities face poverty and marginalisation".

At the launch of the appeal at St Barnabas Church, Huntingdon, Dr Russell told supporters that in the year 2004 to 2005, 13 per cent of families in East Cambridgeshire were accepted as homeless by local authorities, compared with 7.8 per cent across England.

Three thousand farm workers in Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire had also lost their jobs in the last five years.

"This year, together with many other dioceses, we shall be supporting the Church Urban Fund in challenging poverty in our own country," said Dr Russell. "As the title implies, its projects have been mainly in urban areas. However, the work of the CUF also extends to rural areas where there is extensive and considerable need, as we know in this diocese.