HUBS OF HOPE

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 24 HUBS OF HOPE 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. 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

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.

HOLIDAY HUNGER PROGRAMME, EMPLOYMENT COACHING AND LIFE SKILLS LOVECHURCH, Bournemouth

SOUL Church, Norwich LYN food hub

25 HUBS OF HOPE SCHOOL UNIFORMS, MAKING MEALS ON A BUDGET AND FREEDOM FROM ADDICTION SOUL Church, Norwich Here at Soul Foundation we are busier than ever! Since the cost-of-living crisis began, more and more people are coming through our doors and we love it! What a blessing it is to get to be the hands and feet of Jesus here in Norwich. Most recently we have been able to help families out with school uniforms as their children return to school which our families have said has taken a huge weight off them. We have also been able to launch nutrition classes which begin in a few weeks and our customers are so excited to learn how to make healthy meals on a budget. We also run our weekly wellbeing group which provides community for the lonely. We see around 80 people each week who have lunch, a time of worship and then will break into small groups where we run discipleship courses, arts & crafts as well as freedom from addiction courses. We also had the privilege to baptise 12 of this amazing group! We couldn’t be more grateful for LYN and being a hub of hope!

Sam Mitchem

During the Pandemic our pop-up foodbank gave out around 210,000 meals-worth of food to people across the town. We are in one of the most deprived areas in the UK, and food insecurity is a huge issue. Since the Pandemic we have reshaped our thinking, and developed a holiday hunger programme for school families in need. As the cost-of-living crisis deepens, we are responding with breakfasts for children before school. Whilst these improving nutrition and learning spaces has a lifetime impact – imagine no hungry children across our nation! We work in a multi-ethnic and multicultural context, with 31 different first languages in the local schools! The LYN Hub Accelerator has given us a brilliant toolkit to maximise our impact as we walk with, and empower people to move from crisis (debt and food provision) to things that help with the causes such as unemployment coaching, debt counselling and life skills. And we’re excited to be putting forward a bid to become part of the local mental health and wellbeing hubs. It is wonderful walking with people as they journey from despair to hope and purpose. We love working in partnerships locally and being part of a national movement of the Church through LYN is so great. In history, God’s people have changed nations, cultures and people, because his new Kingdom of light, life and justice is just so attractive. God develops beauty in all our broken places through the cross.

Tracey Radvan

LYN guests at HTB FOOD, DEBT, BENEFITS ADVICE AND SCHOOLS WORK Network Church, Sheffield ‘Is this the foodbank? We’ve just walked from Shiregreen’, said the women coming through the doors of our warehouse. ‘No. This is just warehousing, the foodbank is across the road, let me take you.’ As we walked across, I asked why she’d walked four miles (from Shiregreen) to get here, rather than going to one of our closer foodbanks. ‘They aren’t open now’, was of course the answer. She needed food now. The conversation was a window into the needs in Sheffield and how our Hub is meeting them. A window into the lives of people in crisis, in desperate need for food and warmth. A window into how the hub has grown to 11 foodbank sites and made a whole building a warehouse to meet that crisis. A window into the causes of poverty that we are working to tackle as it has included debt, benefits and employment advisors into the support available. A window into the care offered in the community of Shiregreen with one-to-one schools work, youth and children’s clubs, sports work and holiday activities – meaning that the day’s conversation and support was part of a much bigger picture and vision – towards social transformation in our Sheffield. Sam Evans Reviving Communities

St Mary’s Andover

26 16 hubs participating The HUB Accelerator Pilot

This year, Love your Neighbour launched the Hub Accelerator – a 7-month programme covering 3 modules – in mission, strategy and operations.

B&A Bristol LYN hub Hubs of Hope

75 hours training over 7 months

Johannes Radvan, Hub Accelerator

Theory of CHANGE

Churches are in the business of changing lives. But how do we know that what we’re doing in our local community really makes a difference for the right people? We are grateful to the Impact team at Resurgo who have been working with Love Your Neighbour to help equip the Hubs to think about their social impact in more depth. Drawing on a ‘theory of change’ process – our aim has been to help Hubs understand better the needs in their local community, identify groups they could work with and define the change they are hoping to bring about. The Hubs now claim to have deeper insight into the effectiveness of their activities and a more focussed strategy for social transformation.