The government's national cohesion agenda often focuses on religious groups and 'interfaith' working to increase mutual understanding and this agenda is often delivered in local areas. We believe that the need for dialogue between religious groups and the non-religious is just as important and a key part of our local development project is to build the capacity of humanists locally to involved themselves in this work. At the same there is a need for informed non-religious input into local authority work in areas of equality and diversity to do with religion and belief. The BHA aspires to develop a network of humanists to contribute to these two agendas, but we need to build the capacity of local people to deliver this. For the past eighteen months we have employed a project officer to establish the network and begin to train and skill members of it to take this work forward. In the next phase we want to develop the training of existing volunteers and recruit more, with a particular emphasis on increasing the contribution of young people to this work and also on developing the ability of humanists locally to contribute to building community cohesion across a number of agencies such as local hospitals, schools and colleges. We want to employ a project coordinator for two years and deliver training for our volunteers, as well as initiating outreach activities and researching the scope for contribution by humanists locally.