Camping Trip 2009

It's that time of year again when we need to publicise this year's camping trip. We'll be heading off to a campsite near Broadstairs for August Bank Holiday Weekend 29-31 August. Last year over 20 of us went along, let's see how many will make it this time! The full details can be downloaded here...

Junior Soldier

From time to time in the hope:asha community individuals choose to make a public commitment and become members of The Salvation Army in Stepney. This is something we always like to celebrate as it means that someone is wanting to publically declare that they will do their best to follow the example of Jesus and orientate their lives around Him.

A couple of weeks ago, Henry, became our first Junior Solider. This is the promise he made: 'Having asked God for forgiveness, I will be his loving and obedient child. Because Jesus is my Saviour from sin, I will trust him to keep me good, and will try to help others to follow him. I promise to pray, to read my Bible and, by his help, to lead a life that is clean in thought, word and deed. I will not smoke, take harmful drugs or drink alcoholic drinks.'

We think it's pretty cool that he made this promise and in return we promise to do our best to support him to live it out.

We're in the news!

This week a 4 page article appeared in The Salvation Army's weekly newspaper - The War Cry - featuring our work here in Stepney. You can read it here.

Salvation Army marching for justice

See some footage from our involvement in the Strangers into Citizens march. It features support from Colonel Bill Cochrane, Chief Secretary (second in command) of The Salvation Army in the UK.

In the Garden

A small group of us had a great time yesterday in Good Neighbours. Take a look at our work in these two photos - a before and after! We meet for Good Neighbours every month (3rd Sunday of the month) from 10:30am-12:30pm followed by a lunch. No expertise required - just an openness to working with others.

Deal With It Day 09

Saturday was just a brilliant day! The Deal With It Day held in Shandy Park was a fantastic success. We estimate over 1000 local residents made their way over to the park during the afternoon to join in the activities and reclaim the park from drug-dealing and turn it into a place of celebration. Children from three local schools - Halley, Ben Jonson and Sir William Burrough - performed on the stage; a local choir from Departure Arts Centre sang songs from around the world; the older residents enjoyed Jackie's Tea Dance; young people got involved in graffiti art and football; 15 organisations gave out information about community activities and drugs awareness information; CADAA (Communities Against Drugs and Alcohol Abuse) hosted a seminar on a community response to drugs. We were delighted with how it went and proud to be involved in making it all happen. Check out some photos of the activities here and also here and below.

Business with the Mayor

Yesterday, The Salvation Army in Stepney was represented at City Hall in a meeting with Boris Johnson - Mayor of London. As part of a London Citizens delegation, we discussed action with regards to the City Safe, Strangers into Citizens, Living Wage and Affordable Housing campaigns. It was an extremely positive meeting and some good business was done. We were able to share with him some of the work we've done with local businesses in Stepney to sign them up to become City Safe Havens. He also committed himself to continuted support of The Strangers into Citizens agenda that we have been very actively pursuing in the hope:asha community.

Coming Events...

Let's hope the summer weather makes a come back next week because we're involved in two events - both happening in Shandy Park, Stepney.

The first is a picnic this coming Sunday - 7 June - at 12 noon. All welcome - bring picnic, rug, friends and neighbours. We'll have some sports equipment, too so come prepared for a game of rounders! Flyers (PDF) can be downloaded here to be distributed.

Next Saturday - 13th June - we are taking part in the Deal With It Day 2009. As part of the organising group we are looking forward to an even better day than last year and have loads of activities planned. See below for all the info and please distribute the flyer (PDF download here).