COMMUNITY PROJECTS

As Christians, we have a God-given desire to serve other people in our community, particularly those who need some help to cope with life's issues.

Our latest project, which opened on 1st November 2012, is Rochdale Foodbank. Sponsored by The Trussell Trust, who have seen over 270 of these Foodbanks open around the UK in the last 2 years, this will involve the whole community, including other churches.  Basically, we collect non-perishable food from anywhere in Rochdale and distribute it to local families in crisis in, boxes of 3-days' meals. You can get more detail from: www.rochdale.foodbank.org.uk

We've also been working with a small group of Iranians in the last couple of years, all of whom have become Christians, and most have been given permission to remain in the UK. They cannot return to Iran and they miss their families a lot. So we do what we can to fill that gap. Love and kindness goes further than money! They have created a weblog to pass on the Christian message to family and others in Iran - mostly in Farsi (Persian).  You can follow it here: http://creation-to-eternity.blogspot.co.uk/

Of course, God always has a much bigger picture of who that is than we do, so although there are people we serve and get alongside in Rochdale  , there arealso others we serve in other countries, and for that we need to work with other organisations in order to be most effective.

For instance, we are committed to helping some families, particularly widows and orphans in a town called Mbeya in the south of Tanzania, in Africa. They have many problems with malaria and aids, and are very poor. Even the little we can do helps a lot. We work alongside a Christian charity called Grassroots to do this. You can help by sponsoring a primary school child for £3.50 a month. http://grassroots.org.uk/home/projects/mbeya-tanzania

We have some other people we help in Medellin in Colombia, South America. They are in the middle of on-going civil war and gang warfare, again leaving many women and children without much food or money and no education. We support "Familia en Accion" creating employment for the mums and education for the children in a little village called Alta Vista on the outskirts of Medellin.

As part of our committment to work closely with the whole community, both secular, Christian, and other faiths, we are members of FAITHWORKS, whose charter defines the way we have chosen to interact with our community.http://www.faithworks.info/about-us/faithworks-charter