Category: Charity work

Ride and Stride 2023

Ride and Stride this year is on Saturday 9th September and sponsorship forms are available at the back of the church.  

Remember that 50% of the money received goes to our church and the remaining 50% goes to a fund administered by the Friends of Kent Churches for urgent repairs.

Please think about how you can take part, either walking or cycling around as many churches as you can on the day, and find friends or relatives to sponsor you.

The local organiser for St Stephen’s is Peter Brown who will he happy to answer any questions.

Participants can download forms by following the links below:

UPDATE!

Thank you to everyone who sponsored the choir team this year, raising a fantastic £252.00 which will be shared between the Friends of Kent Churches and St Stephen’s.

Lent Appeal 2023 – Tools with a Mission

Every Sunday during the season of Lent (apart from March 19th), I will be in the Church Hall after Eucharist, with boxes and bags to collect your unwanted tools and donate them to the excellent charity Tools with a Mission. They collect the tools we no longer want and deliver them to Africans who desperately need them – a simple yet brilliant idea, which is eco-friendly to boot.

You can find a full list of what TWAM does and doesn’t want here:

https://www.twam.uk/donatetools?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI_9e2qpGY_QIVR57tCh1DDwv6EAAYASABEgIKl_D_BwE

By the way, their definition of tool is pretty broad – it encompasses Bibles in plain English (presumably not King James), so if you have any of those, they would also be very gratefully received.

Please get in touch with me at {This email is obscured. Your must have javascript enabled to see it} if you would like to donate tools and/or Bibles, as it will help me to get a reasonable idea of how many boxes and bags I’ll need! Please do consult the webpage mentioned above, as there is quite a list of things they don’t want. Finally, please bear in mind that I have limited storage space, so I can’t accept anything much larger than a small sewing machine or a laptop computer.

I must say I’m really looking forward to this collection – many thanks in advance for all your donations!

James
Eco Church Rep

Christian Aid Week 15th – 22nd May 2022

There will be a special service for Christian Aid week for the whole of the Canterbury community, held at St Stephen’s Church on Sunday 22nd May at 6.00pm.

Everyone is welcome and we look forward to seeing you there.

Traidcraft Christmas Stall

Next Sunday, 21st November, Traidcraft will be back again in the church Hall with their usual beautiful cards and gifts for us to buy as we enjoy our coffee after church. Do come and support them!

Harvest Festival

Posted on 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 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 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 by Stephen Barker

On 1st 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 27th 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 by Stephen Barker

Christian Aid Week 
The Canterbury group invite you to a Zoom service on Sunday 9th 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 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.

>