Posts

This has been one of the easiest news items to write this year! On behalf of the SVP Team, the Young Persons SVP, the wider team of food bank volunteers and our team of ’temporary’ members who continue to do our home delivery service, we would like to say a huge ‘Thank You’ to all of you, our bedrock.

Your spiritual and financial support and your continual encouragement of the work we do is the fuel that keeps us going! Your fabulous response to our Easter Appeal, the Young Persons Cake Sale and the recent sale of religious items, was humbling to us and affirmed that the Holy Spirit is a true reality in our parish. Please pray that this will always be the case and please have a very Holy Christmas and a very Happy New Year.

The Young Persons SVP cake sale proceeds were transformed into Christmas presents and safely delivered to the care home this week! Many thanks also to all of those who bought cakes last month, and also to the helpers who wrapped and packed these gifts.

Please thank the Young Persons SVP members when you meet them. They are our future.

Last Monday evening the SVP team held their final monthly meeting of the year, a year like no other! Guided by the Holy Spirit, and sustained by your prayers and encouragement, we have been able to maintain and adapt most of our activities during the pandemic.

The launch of our Young Persons SVP Team in March has been one of our highlights for 2020 and this group has now grown to 13 members. Some of these members formed the backbone of the Foodbank Team since the start of the first lockdown. In this year, of all years, we ask you to pray for these young people, and all young people, as we continue to journey through the challenges of COVID-19.

With the festive season rapidly approaching, the food bank is as busy as ever. The holidays can be especially hard on families who are struggling, and the global pandemic is making it harder still.

As always, we rely on your donations. Items we most regularly require are listed here. In addition to these, please consider donating seasonal items that may be a treat for those in need, such as the following:

I’ve been volunteering for a couple of years with the Jesuit Refugee Service, which aims to support refugees, asylum seekers and migrants. The JRS, and support for refugees and immigrants in general, is one of the activities that our conference of the SVP focuses on.

I’m one of three people in our group who volunteer as “social visitors.” Before the lockdown, that meant regularly travelling out to the Immigration Detention Centres near Heathrow, Europe’s largest. There are two centres, called Harmondsworth and Colnbrook, where several hundred young men (and a very small number of women) are held indefinitely, often for several weeks or months, pending deportation or granting of asylum. They are usually alone, with no family or friends to visit them. My job is mostly to just talk with them and treat them as people, not as cases to be adjudicated.