Charity work – St Stephen's Church, Canterbury

Harvest Festival

Posted on 25 September, 202127 September, 2021 by Stephen Barker

Next Sunday, 3rd October, is our Harvest Festival. It is our tradition at St Stephen’s to support the work of Catching Lives and the Canterbury Food Bank with the generous donations of members of our congregation. If you are thinking about donating something next weekend, you might find the following suggestions useful:

Catching lives are particularly looking for Bottles or cartons of water, juice or squash; Hand sanitiser, treat items – chocolate, crisps, etc; packs of tissues, baby wipes, cotton buds; totes and batteries, waterproof ponchos, foil blankets; underwear; dog treats; fruit cereal bars; lip balm; hand cream

Canterbury Food Bank is currently very low on the following items, but would also appreciate any non-perishable goods: laundry detergents; cleaning sprays; cereal; long-life milk; fruit juice; instant mash; large nappies (size 5/6); baby wipes

Donations can be made at any of our services next Sunday, and don’t forget that we have yellow bins for the Canterbury Food Bank in the church porch and church hall all year round.

The Acorn Café Charity Coffee Morning

Posted on 17 September, 202127 September, 2021 by Stephen Barker

Wednesday September 22nd
from 10.30
In St Stephen’s Church Hall
In aid of MacMillan Nurses
Cakes and paperbacks
Do join us

Dear All – it would be great if you were able to join us for the charity Coffee Morning on Wednesday of next week – even if you were able to pop in briefly!

There will be a stall for sweet and savoury items and also paperbacks. We will not be having other stalls so the hall will not be so crowded.

Items for the bakery stall will be most welcome!

It would be lovely to have your support!

Jenny and Libby

Christian Aid Guided walk through Blean Woods

Posted on 24 July, 202131 July, 2021 by Stephen Barker

SATURDAY 14th AUGUST 2.30 P.M.

To enjoy nature without getting lost in it, and to raise money for Christian Aid, we have organised a guided Saturday afternoon walk through Blean Woods. The walk should last approximately one and a half to two hours depending on energy levels.

The meeting point will be the Blean Woods Nature Reserve car park, off Rough Common Road, at 2.30. For those coming by public transport, the Triangle and Number 4 buses stop by the Rough Common roundabout on the A 290, from which a short stroll takes you to the car park.

There is no need to book in advance. But please consider making a donation to Christian Aid (£5 minimum?) in cash on completion of the walk, or online at https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/canterburychristianaidfundraising

Two local events in support of Christian Aid

Posted on 12 June, 202127 July, 2021 by Stephen Barker

On 1^st July members of the Canterbury Christian Aid group, from churches all over the city and the surrounding villages, will walk for six hours (10am to 4pm) in the High Street, carrying water cans, in solidarity with all those who walk long distances to collect water. To sponsor this event, please go to https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/canterburychristianaidfundraising

On 27^th July three members of the group, John Ward (St Mary Bredin), Lucy Bryan (St Peter’s Methodist Church) and Brian McHenry (St Dunstan’s, St Mildred’s and St Peter’s Canterbury), will walk the Elham Valley Way from Hythe to Canterbury (22.5 miles). To sponsor this event please go to https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/ealhamvalleywalk

Christian Aid

Posted on 17 April, 2021 by Stephen Barker

Christian Aid Week
The Canterbury group invite you to a Zoom service on Sunday 9^th May at 630 pm.
Lord Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, the Chair of Christian Aid, will give an address during the service.
Please book your place at the service by emailing brian@mchenry.co.uk

What are YOU going to do for Christian Aid week?

In previous years members of St Stephen’s have raised £2000 through door-to-door collections – mostly in small change. We can’t do that this year, but the need has not gone away – remember Rose, the Kenyan grandmother who has to walk miles each day for water because the dam near her house is too small?

We have already raised over £600 by donations from the congregation to our Lent Appeal: Christian Aid week (10th–16th May) is when we go beyond that group, reminding other well-meaning people of the need and getting their help.

We can’t go door to door, but we can reach out in other ways:

“virtual door-to-door” – tell your friends and contacts about Rose by email or on social media and ask them to help (you can copy Rose’s story off our Just-Giving page https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/st-stephen-s-church-canterbury)
Organise an online social event – a quiz, a concert, a games evening – and ask everyone you know to take part and make a small donation. If everyone who gets this mailing got 5 guests who donated £2 each, we’d raise over £1000.
Online auction – have you been clearing out your cupboards during lockdown but can’t get rid of stuff because the charity shops are still shut? Auction it online and donate the proceeds to Christian Aid.
Sponsored activities – need to get in shape after lockdown? Sponsored slims, sponsored walks, climb a virtual mountain by walking upstairs, get your hair cut, don’t get your hair cut – the possibilities are endless. Last year Libby raised several hundred pounds by knitting against the clock in her front garden.

Let us know what you plan to do at pewsnews@ststephenscanterbury.net and we can publicise it for you in our weekly mailing; also if you need someone to help with your idea we can let people know that too.

Christian Aid Week Resources

Posted on 9 May, 20209 May, 2020 by Peter Toon

Here are some links to help you do your bit towards Christian Aid Week fundraising:

The Christian Aid website
https://www.christianaid.org.uk/

Lots of information, online activities to support and ideas for your own fundraising activities.

St Stephen’s Just-giving page.

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/ststephenschristianaid2020

Donate here to make sure we meet our target of raising as much as in a normal year.

St Stephen’s Facebook page

https://www.facebook.com/ststephenscanterbury/

Use this to publicise your activities and to keep up with what others are doing.

Christian Aid pictures and banners for e- envelopes

My e-envelope message – I’m posting this here because it includes the figures I quoted in my sermon which you may want to use in your e-envelope message.

Dear Friends

This is Christian Aid week. Normally we would be collecting house to house, but the Covid-19 epidemic makes this impossible. The epidemic also however makes it even more important that people have access to soap, clean water and sanitary facilities. At least 10% of the world’s population doesnt have access to safe drinking water. One in 4 don’t have a toilet, and 673 million people have to defecate in the open. Not surprisingly this leads to a lot of illness, apart from Covid19. The latest figures from 2017 tell us that more than half a million children in the world under 5 die each year from diarrhoea. That’s more in one month, every month than those of all ages who have died in the UK from coronavirus. The death rate in children under 5 from diarrhoea is 100 times that in developed countries including the UK.

There are three ways in which you can help:

Make a donation yourself:

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/ststephenschristianaid2020

forward this email to others and encourage them to donate

sponsor me in my “knitathon”. (details below)

A Novice Knitathon

I only learnt to knit last November so I’ll be knitting a scarf (it’s the only thing I can knit!) and asking to be sponsored for every inch I knit during Christian Aid week. To give you some idea what to expect the four foot scarves I’ve knitted for Yvan and for his mother so far have taken me about two months each.

Here is a photo of my casting on so you can see what I plan to knit.

I’ll post a message saying how much I have managed to knit (with photographic evidence) on my blog next Sunday.

You can sponsor me by sending an email, by adding a comment to my Christian Aid blog post or on St Stephn’s Facebook page, or direct to the just-giving page. https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/ststephenschristianaid2020

When I’ve finished the scarf (probably sometime in the Autumn) it will be given to a charity working with homeless people so it can help keep someone in the UK warm next winter.

Christian Aid Week

Posted on 4 May, 20204 May, 2020 by Peter Toon

Normally this week many of us would be getting ready for our house to house collection of Christian Aid Week. St Stephen’s usually raises around £2000 through this – a significant some for those in poor countries living on a few pounds a week.

This year we cannot do that but instead we have set up a “Just Giving” page https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/ststephenschristianaid2020 so that all of us, whether we normally collect for Christian Aid or not, can both to make a donation and also encourage our friends and neighbours to contribute.

Some people usually raise money through activities – cake sales, coffee mornings etc. Instead of (or as well as) asking people for donations why not be imaginative and create some online fund raising activities people can take part in? There are ideas and more information on
https://www.christianaid.org.uk/news/coronavirus-guidance-christian-aid-week-events-and-activities

Please help to make sure we don’t let those who rely on Christian Aid down in this year when they too face the problems of Covid-19 but without the NHS and our comfortable houses to help us ride it out. Start planning NOW what you are going to do this week Christian Aid week. Why not post your ideas on the St Stephen’s Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/ststephenscanterbury/ ?

St Stephen’s Lent Appeal – Toilet Twinning

Posted on 18 March, 201919 March, 2019 by Stephen Barker

CLICK HERE TO DONATE NOW!

2.3 billion people don’t have somewhere safe and hygienic to go to the toilet. (WHO/Unicef)

Almost 1,000 children die every day from preventable diseases linked to dirty water and unsafe toilets. (UN)

663 million people live without safeChildren worldwide miss 443 million school days each year because of dirty water and poor sanitation. (UN)

The lack of a loo makes women and girls a target for sexual attack as they go to the toilet in the open, late at night.

Every year, women and girls spend 97 billion hours finding a place to go. (World Bank)

How Twinning Works

For a donation, you can twin your loo with an impoverished family’s household latrine, in a country of your choosing. Your smallest room becomes the proud owner of a certificate, complete with a photo and GPS coordinates so you can look up your twin’s location on Google Maps. Your donation will be used to provide clean water, basic sanitation, and hygiene education.

We aim to raise £240 to twin the Church Hall toilets this Lent – but why not twin your own loo this Lent for £60?

CLICK HERE TO DONATE NOW!

Peter Toon – End to End

Posted on 30 April, 201430 April, 2014 by Stephen Barker

I’ve wanted to cycle Britain end to end for a long time, but being a rebel I decided to do the it North-West to South-East rather than the more usual Land’s End to John O’Groats route. Its a bit shorter and as I live in Kent the end point is only 20 miles from home. The only drawback is that the nearest railway station is 70 miles from Cape Wrath and unless I can get a lift I’ll have to cycle to the starting point!

I aim to cycle about 30 miles a day, so the whole trip will take about a month. I’m booked on the train to Thurso on May 2nd, so all being well the trip will start on May 4th and end around June 5th. But weather, technical problems and the strength of my legs may lead to some slippage on this!

Peter's route — Peter’s route Text version of route

The trip works out at a little over 850 miles, so to reach my target I need sponsorship of just under £12 per mile. You can donate a lump sum on here (and gift-aid it if you pay UK tax) or you can email me petertoon@aol.com with a promise of sponsorship so much per mile or a fixed sum, or fill in one of my paper sponsorship forms.

I’ve been aware of the importance of homelessness, particularly for single people since I worked at Centrepoint as a medical student and later at St Botolph’s when I was a GP. If you are homeless then solving the problems which led to homelessness in the first place, be it unemployment, relationship breakdown, mental health, drug or alcochol problems becomes much harder. It’s like falling down into a pit – and charities like Catching Lives drops down a rope to help people climb back up again.

Catching Lives runs a day centre which offers advice and support to homeless people in Canterbury as well as a hot meal and a warm place to sit. Alongside local churches they also run a night shelter throughout the months of December, January and February.

Please give generously to support this worthwhile cause which really does catch those whose lives have fallen through the safety net of the welfare state.

Peter Toon

You can sponsor Peter by clicking here to visit his Just Giving page.