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‘Tis funny how Life is now categorised into pre-pandemic and post-pandemic. Habits and daily routines have certainly changed. Our food bank is just one small example: Pre-pandemic we would normally have seen at each session, say, 10 clients and would have had plenty of time to chat and get to know them. Our new normal is now between 80 and 90 clients on a typical Saturday!

This brings challenges and exposes weaknesses. Probably our biggest weakness at the moment is our lack of language skills. Are you able to communicate in Arabic, Farsi, Polish, Ukrainian or Romanian? And would you like to volunteer at our food bank? You do not need to commit to every Saturday, but if you could help out, even a little, then that would be a huge help to our clients, and to us! Why not have a think and then just reach out to us! We’d love to hear from you.

Have you ever browsed the national SVP website? If you can, why not pay it a visit sometime and you’ll get a lovely flavour of all the different areas that the SVP covers. Whether it be advocating for Social Justice at government level, helping the most vulnerable at community level or linking with our brothers and sisters in need overseas you will see the real evidence of the Holy Spirit turning concern into action.

Just a reminder that we are holding our annual SVP Cream Teas next Saturday afternoon from 3pm to 5pm. If the weather co-operates we will set up some tables outside so, please God, it will be a lovely event. This is the first SVP fundraiser of 2024 so we’d really appreciate your support and don’t be shy about bringing your family and friends also!

On a more profound note, you may have followed the news about the shocking conditions at Harmondsworth Immigration Removal Centre found by HM Inspector of Prisons. If you would like to provide some hope and a friendly face to those being detained then why not get in touch with us? We support the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) in exactly that. I’m sure if roles were reversed we would absolutely welcome a friendly voice. Have a think and rest assured that helping the JRS is a humbling and blessed opportunity.

A few Sundays back we mentioned the B-Attitudes team (i.e., the young person’s SVP) are always looking for new members. As a pure co-incidence, you might like to know that Monday is the UN’s World Youth Skills Day, with the theme for 2024 being “Youth Skills for Peace and Development”. It is the youth of today who will be solving the problems of an ever more complicated world in the future and, in order to address those problems, the UN has obviously concluded that today’s youth need to be nurtured in the skills of peace and development.

We had our monthly meeting on Monday evening and, as always, it was a packed agenda! It started with us welcoming a new member to the team, our 20th, and this really consolidates our strength in depth. We certainly have plenty of space for more new members, who then bring a fresh perspective and new ideas to the wider team, so please come forward if you’d like to come onboard.