St Mary Redcliffe Parish Magazine March 2019

BRISTOL CHURCHES WINTER NIGHT SHELTER: NEWS AND
THANKS — II Paul Sylvester and Sarah Yates have been coordinating
the Winter Night Shelter provision for SMR at Faithspace; Sarah writes this
month with Night Shelter news, and says a big thank you from the organising
team to everyone who participated in this year’s provision —
Dear everyone
PAUL SYLVESTER and I were asked to organise and
run the Friday-Saturday part of the Bristol Churches
Winter Night Shelter at Faithspace that took place every Friday
evening to Saturday morning for the first six weeks of
this year. There were six other venues running for the other
nights of the week across Bristol in Phase One. The project
has now moved into Phase Two and seven different churches
have taken over as night shelter venues.
We had a wonderful team of volunteers. There were 35 of us who
volunteered in total, with ten people on duty during the evening
session to make the beds, set the table, help with welcoming and
chatting to the guests. We had two teams of chefs who alternated
cooking the evening meals and even did a cooked breakfast on
the final morning. The guests and volunteers all sat down to eat
together so that we had a large table seating up to 25 people. There
were four volunteers staying overnight (two awake; two asleep at
any one time) and six people coming in to help with the breakfast,
take out the mattresses which had to be moved to the next venue
and generally tidy up. We had a team of four people each week
doing the laundry.
We were able to accommodate up to twelve male guests and
most weeks had about ten people staying. Four of the guests
have stayed with the project since the very first week, which
was at the Salvation Army in Easton. They are hoping to save
money during the three months of the project, so that they can
secure accommodation at the end of the time.
We have some good news about some of the other guests who
started the project at the beginning of January:
• two guests have left the project as they gained accommodation
and work.
• two guests gained employment and so left to stay at a different
shelter.
• one guest is moving on at the end of this week as he
has work and somewhere to stay outside of Bristol.
• three guests are working whilst staying at the shelter
and are often up at 5am to go to work.
• one guest has started a course in IT and business skills.
OUR THANKS TO —
Paul and I would like to thank everyone from St Mary
Redcliffe who helped by volunteering at the Night Shelter.
We’d also like to thank Eleanor Vousden for her beautiful
Christmas Card design and Marcus and Jane Ashman for
facilitating the printing of the design and coordinating the
sale of the Cards. THIS ENDEAVOUR raised over £800 which
paid for all the food, towels and cooking utensils that we
needed to buy.
We’d like to thank too everyone who purchased and donated
clothing and toiletries for the men who stayed with us. They
really appreciated all of the things you kindly gave them.
S
arah Yates
Joint Co-ordinator for BCWNS at Faithspace
POSTSCRIPT from BCWNS — With Phase 2 starting,
please pray that our guests settle in well and adjust to a
new pattern and new volunteers. Please pray for sensitivity
on the part of our volunteers and wisdom in their interactions
with guests, and for all churches hosting for the first time.