Our church supports Christian Aid through collections during Christian Aid Week and also through the URC Commitment for Life scheme – the URC’s global justice programme. Currently, our church supports Commitment for Life partners in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory.
Because of the interests of our members, The Leprosy Mission and The Compassionate Friends are two charities that receive regular support. Some members give regularly to TLM and money is also raised by sale of Christmas goods and donated plants, flowers and vegetables throughout the year.
The Junior Church organises the filling of shoe boxes with gifts that are sent through the Teams4U Christmas Shoebox Appeal to needy children and families in Eastern Europe.
Recently, much of our fundraising work has been concerned with supporting organisations and groups working with homeless people in Nottingham, including Framework and The Friary. We have also supported Upendo Junior School in Kenya in its work to support needy children from around Kiminini.
We have special collections to support DEC appeals and seek to respond to other needs as they are identified to us. For example, in the summer of 2006, one of our then members who came from Malawi, told us about the need for water to irrigate the land in his home village. We responded to this by setting up a Malawi Villages Water Project to pay for the provision of water to a group of five villages. In 2008 and 2009 we raised money for projects in Brazil, including ‘Luz no Nordeste‘ – ‘Light in the Northeast’ (a project established by the Bible Society of Brazil in conjunction with the International Bible Societies and the Scottish Bible Society) and ‘Cristo é Vida‘ – ‘Christ is Life’ – a ‘before and after school’ project run by the Independent Presbyterian Church of Brazil in the Pirambu neighbourhood of Fortaleza.
