Outreach

Outreach at Lion Walk Church is about raising awareness of human need and supporting community projects worldwide. We regularly support projects in our local community and across the world, with funds raised from our lunchtime concerts and from donations from members.

We collect for the Christian Aid door-to-door collections during Christian Aid Week. Through the period of Harvest Thanksgiving, we have gathered in donations for the local Soup Run, which teams from our congregation support each month, as well as our substantial contributions from the congregation for Commitment for Life. At Christmas-time we raise funds from the Christmas Tree Festival and from Christmas services for the Colchester Night Shelter and the Colchester and Tendring Women’s Refuge, which is now called Next Chapter.

In 2019 we raised the following:

We raised a total of £8773.50 for Commitment for Life, for Christian Aid partners’ work in Bangladesh. This is more than last year – thanks to everyone for such a tremendous effort!

We raised £3,115.24 in the Christmas Collections (including the Christmas Tree Festival, Art Exhibition, and concerts). Half of this went to the Colchester Night Shelter, and half to Next Chapter (formerly the Colchester and Tendring Womens’ Refuge). Again this is more than last year, and represents the fantastic efforts put in by all the organisers and helpers. Thank you all.

Our spring/summer Christian Aid house-to-house collections raised £816.39

We normally support one ‘focus charity’ which changes once a year in the autumn, and then we also donate smaller sums of money to other charities, with a particular focus on those based in our own community or smaller charities. Our focus charity is Acorn Village.

Here are the details of the charities supported in February 2020:

Acorn Village
Acorn Village (Lion Walk Church’s Focus Charity) offers high quality care and accommodation to adults with learning disabilities. Within two models of care, residential and supported living services, they provide support to meet a number of needs within large or small care packages.

Ethiopiaid
Ethiopiaid partners with local Ethiopian projects dedicated to promoting equality and opportunities for women and girls – and reducing harmful practices. They work on a range of projects dedicated to improving maternal health access and eradicating obstetric fistula (childbirth injuries) throughout the country. Their local partners also work on a range of projects dedicated to improving access to educational opportunities, and support people living with disabilities to help them fulfil their potential.

Malawi Association for Christian Support (MACS)
Based in Eastern England, MACS has been working in Malawi since 1993. This lovely land is among the poorest ten countries in the world. They work in partnership with local people on education, health and community projects in the rural areas, where the needs are greatest. People in the community work hard to contribute locally available materials.

Citizens Advice Colchester
We mostly know what CAB does, and the great advice that it offers to people in all walks of life, but did you know that it has now lost most of its funding due to government cuts and now only operates one day a week in Crouch St and one day a week in Greenstead? Staffed mainly by volunteers, they are now seeking charitable funding in a way they didn’t need to before.

Anne Robson Trust (Butterfly Volunteers)
Death for some people is a peaceful experience, spent in the presence of loved ones. For many others, the last days of life are spent in a hospital bed, frightened and alone.
Only 3% of people would choose to die in hospital, yet nearly 50% actually do. We are 8 times more likely to die in a hospital than in a hospice.
The vision of the Anne Robson is to work with NHS hospitals across the country to help them set up ‘Butterfly Volunteer’ teams – that support patients who are dying in hospital, many of whom have no other visitors at all. Colchester General Hospital is one of the hospitals in which they work.

Re-cycle
Based in a large warehouse near Wormingford, Re-cycle collects pre-owned bikes, repairs them, and ships them out to some of the most remote communities in Africa. Bikes are resilient, cheap to buy and cost nothing to run. They can be maintained by trained repairers and can be used by the entire family. Re-cycle also manage projects to train bike mechanics in the countries they serve. Several Lion Walkers have donated their old bikes and given them a new lease of life!

Donations made in December 2019, to a total of £1400.

Acorn Village

Catherine Bullen Foundation

CBM

Jubilee Debt Campaign

Marie Curie

Practical Action

Bible Society

Freedom from Torture

Coram

Donations made in March-September 2019:

TEECH