Hubs of Hope
COMMUNITY SHOP, ENGLISH CLASSES AND A PLACE FOR HELP
Gas Street, Birmingham After the Pandemic, the needs of our community, like so many, were connection. Stay and Play, Craft Club, Community Choir, and more all allow a space for people to meet others, get to know them, and build community. The Community Shop, where members can get 10 items for £3 together with a free tea or coffee in our café, also gives a space for relationship building as well as tackling food insecurity. And of course, at the heart of a lot of the need in our community is financial, which our CAP Debt Centre and Job Club seeks to address. English Conversation Classes are also a key part of how we meet the need of food insecurity and social isolation, increasing ability to make connections and find employment.
F O S B HU 24
Most of all, our hub is a place for help. We’ve seen more and more people walk through our door needing assistance, whether it be with a form they need filling, or because they’ve been scammed, or with their asylum process. This is what I love to see, that people can walk into our church and see it as hope, as somewhere they’ll get help. Esther Rai
Reviving Communities
Across the country, hundreds of churches are partnering together to respond to the needs of their communities: from crisis food provision to debt and employment support, to other wrap-around care. This year, Love Your Neighbour launched its Hub Accelerator – a pilot programme supporting 16 city centre hubs to become more highly impactful centres of social transformation. These hubs are helping to coordinate social action projects and resource their surrounding communities.
