Praying for Saint Phillip’s

Robert Pickles

Nettes and I had a good time this morning praying in what used to be Saint Phillip’s Sixth Form College. This is a building that has stood empty for some time and is now rented by New College Birmingham. New College works in association with the Birmingham Bible Institute Family that includes Birmingham Christian College. Robert Pickles gave us a guided tour of the building explaining that the plan was to use some of the rooms there for the college, but there was more space than they needed.  He was open to suggestions that may be acceptable uses for the rest of the space, such as opening the canteen as a community café, renovating and using the sports hall and even using rooms for a social enterprise.

Paul & Jackie had invited us there to pray. They work with the homeless and run a Drop In one day a week at the Ledbury Centre. They have been helping decorate Saint Phillips along with some of the guys who go to the Drop In. Paul & Jackie and some others usually pray every other Saturday about the work with the homeless and the Drop In. This time they had decided to come to Saint Phillip's to pray that these premises would be used for God’s Kingdom as New College moves in there and to pray about possiblities for other projects that might be explored.  Paul and Jackie are looking to eventually move the Drop In into larger premises as it is outgrowing our little church building and are hoping to explore the possiblity of using some of the space at Saint Phillip's.

New College, Birmingham

Another idea that has been mooted as a project for the local area is to have local artists and artisans set up a social enterprise running workshops teaching people their skills. It could be that they also have exhibitions and sales. This is the sort of project that might be feasible to be run from a place like Saint Phillip's.

We prayed for some time in the canteen gathered around Robert and Hazel Pickles. It is great when Christians get together at grass roots level to pray like this. But we were also talking about the importance of church leaders getting together. We were saying how we know of local leaders in the area getting together to pray. Robert also mentioned an initiative called 2020 Birmingham where leaders across Birmingham from a number of different groupings are working together with an aim to plant twenty churches in the Birmingham area by the year 2020.

Finally we broke down into two or threes praying in different areas of the centre. I went with Nettes into the small kitchen. Among other things we were praying that the kitchen would serve wholesome food and not be tempted to go the fast food route but to serve healthy, locally sourced produce and for the café to be a fair trade café and possibly even a training enterprise.

This is all very exciting!

Related posts:
Down And Out In Birmingham
More Thoughts On Social Enterprise

WorkShop - our new initiative

My wife Nettes & I have recently launched an initiative that we are calling WorkShop.

What is WorkShop?

WorkShop is a Work Club serving our local community. Ladywood has significant levels of unemployment. There is clearly a need here for activities to engage people as well as enable them to look into paths into training and to take steps towards getting work. Our aim is to get people from Ladywood and the surrounding areas moving towards occupation in paid or voluntary work.

What happens at WorkShop?

WorkShop provides an environment in which to complete activities that get you to think about all your existing skills - even those you never knew you had. Some people may want to find out about training courses or volunteering opportunities. Others may want help writing a CV, or may just want somewhere to start job hunting from. When you come along we will spend some time getting to know you, assessing your needs and suggesting the best activities for you. We aim to be inclusive so wherever you are at please feel free to drop by to see if we can be of help.

We are currently looking at the possibility of a number of different activities including confidence building, keeping motivated, and coping with rejection, as well as interview and presentation skills. We will be having guest speakers from voluntary organisations, local employers and from our local money advice and credit union. We hope eventually that the people who come along will be able do presentations themselves on areas where they have skills or knowledge that may be of interest to others.

As well as helping people into training, volunteering or getting jobs, we hope to eventually help some people set up their own businesses. We’d also like to see an arm of WorkShop develop into a social enterprise, benenfitting the community, becoming self-funding and even providing employment for some of the members. We are continually exploring possibilities but developing such an enterprise would depend a lot on the skills of the group that develops.

What is the history of WorkShop?
We only launched WorkShop in November but already we have spoken to a number of people. We have helped people fill in job application forms and given others advice on how to improve their CVs. We have signposted some people to organisations who provide training and work experience opportunities. There are other people with whom we continue to work and we hope they will form the core of the group.

WorkShop grew out of our vision to see the local church serving the community and we are thrilled to see it taking its first steps. We feel that the time is right for such a venture. This was confirmed when we approached the Jobcentre with a leaflet and learnt that the government are now encouraging Work Clubs as part of the Big Society.

WorkShop has now been launched as a project of Karis Neighbour Scheme working alongside All Being Well. WorkShop is not only partnering with our own church – Church Alive – but also with Church of the Redeemer who have generously donated a room with a number of computers and are helping with our administration.

It’s early days yet but hope something will come of it.

Related posts:
looking into social enterprise
more thoughts on social enterprise
this is my church

More Thoughts On Social Enterprise

I am still thinking about social enterprise. Here is one idea:

On the notice board in the Ledbury Centre - our church’s little building - are some leaflets about All Being Well. This is a project serving Ladywood set up in partnership between Karis Neighbour Scheme - a Christian charity that we work with - and Spring To Life – which runs as a Community Interest Company (one of the relatively new legal statuses for social enterprises). All Being Well is run by Jude Greenwood whom I met at the recent Community Fun Day. Jude runs a number of courses such as stress management, assertiveness training and anger management. These look like places for locals to discuss how to overcome their problems and learn principles that they can apply to their lives.

These courses reminded me of the personal and social development courses that I've been to at Fircroft College. The idea is to discuss some really practical psychological principles and apply them to your life. On Fircroft's site there are testimonies of how they have impacted people lives. I assume at Fircroft they are funded like other college courses as we did learner agreements and achieved qualifications whereas the All Being Well courses are funded by the National Lottery. It is clear on the Spring To Life site that they are working with a Christian ethos.

Interestingly I have just noticed that the same people who taught me on the self development course at Fircroft also teach a couple of courses on bid writing and funding strategies. Might be worth doing these courses next?

I seem to remember that one of the original aims the Ledbury Centre was to run projects into the community. It’s great that now we have our Drop In Centre running there one day a week. These sound like the sort of courses that our church was thinking about running when we first got this little building. I wonder if there still are lots of things that could be set up and run in Ladywood. How would a multi-media or multi-sensory approach to such courses go down in our community? Perhaps we could incorporate music or art? A community arts project even? Just crazy some ideas!

Karis Neighbour Scheme probably knows more about the needs in Ladywood and whether there could be any need for anything like this. The examples of social enterprises from Greenbelt made me think along the lines of fair trade stalls perhaps selling eco-friendly stuff as well. But we can see from the All Being Well example that if someone knows what they are doing they might be able to set up social enterprise to get sustainable funding perhaps from a variety of sources to run courses and projects like these into the community.

What do you think?

Looking into Social Enterprise

I’m currently reading ‘Your Chance to Change the World’. You see, recently I've been hearing a lot about social enterprise - business ventures that aim to help society rather than just make money. This book is a step by step guide on how to set up such a social enterprise by someone who has. Though these ventures may sell products or charge for services, they also get grants both from government organisations and from charities. People may also give donations.

There was a brilliant article on this in the New York Times a couple of years back: Businesses Try To Make Money and Save The World that is quoted in Andrew Jones’s post on the Fourth Sector. Andrew has just been at the Feast – a conference for social enterprise.

There is a growing trend of people starting social enterprises. Hopefully this trend may help bring us out of recession. Many Christians are setting up such projects. Last year Nettes went to some sessions at Greenbelt about social enterprise run by NET - network of entrepreneurial talent. Christians are seeing it as part of their Christian mission to serve the world and the communities where they are based. Over the next year the Jones’s plan to travel around Europe helping to equip what they refer to as missional entrepreneurs.

Also on this topic the Faithworks site is worth checking out. For instance, their Community Audit Pack looks interesting. It is about assessing the needs in your local community. And they have links to information about funding.

You know what? This is beginning to look doable.

Why I am so proud of my wife

I met my wife Nettes eight years ago through a Christian dating website – Christian Connection. I have so many reasons to be proud of her. I love her creativity. I love her artistic talent. The list could go on.

We have always tried to share the domestic chores and child care but I find that Nettes is often left doing more than her fair share. I know we’re not the only ones. But I think she is extremely patient with me.

I love her heart for doing mission here in the inner city of Birmingham. I love the way she reaches out to people. She just loves mixing with people in the neighbourhood. I love the way she has made friends with asylum seekers. And I love her enthusiasm to meet people through our church's Drop In.

This week she came home with a bundle of leaflets about social enterprise. A friend had set up a successful social enterprise called Sport4Life. "Here are some organisations we could contact to see if we could do something like that," she said. "Perhaps this could be the next step with the ministry to the homeless?" I just love the way she is always striving to move forward in God.

I love you Nettes. Happy Saint Valentine's Day!