SEVENOAKS UNITARIANS
A Spiritual Community for Open Minds
Social Justice
Unitarians are committed to social justice and recognize the urgency of the present moment in relation to the environment, the effects of war, the rise of inequality, and mental health and loneliness crises so many face at this time. We have a number of opportunities to put our Unitarian principles of social justice into practice, and to serve the wider community. To find out more about actions across the wider movement you can reach out to The Social Justice Network.
Some charities are particularly close to the hearts of members of the congregation. We support: Sevenoaks Loaves and Fishes Foodbank; Send-a-Child-to-Hucklow; Hope Flowers School in Bethlehem; The Shannon Trust; Sevenoaks Welcomes Refugees.
Loaves and Fishes Foodbank
The Sevenoaks Loaves and Fishes foodbank operates from St John’s Church hall, supporting up to 30 families with young children by giving them a large bag of non-perishable food every week of the year.
Food is donated regularly by the congregations of all denominations across the district, as well as schools.Families in need are recommended by local churches, head teachers of primary schools, and Social Services.
We, Sevenoaks Unitarians, support this charity and ask you to consider bringing a contribution or two to our ‘foodbasket’ each week, or whenever you can, which we will pass on to Loaves and Fishes.
Send a child to Hucklow
“Send a Child to Hucklow” Fund is a Trust to arrange and administer holidays at the Unitarian Holiday Centre, Great Hucklow, Derbyshire in the United Kingdom for groups of disadvantaged children, having no regard to religious, political, racial and other considerations.
Hosted in the Nightingale centre, a spiritual home for many in the Unitarian movement, children enjoy warm meals, engaging and creative activities and the opportunity to play and learn in the great outdoors in a beautiful and peaceful setting.
Hope Flowers School Bethlehem
Our recent collection and crafternoon donations have gone to the Hope Flowers School in Bethlehem which has, for over 35 years, been a pioneer in constructive peace education for children in conflict areas. The school is focusing on children aged 5 to 14 who have been traumatised by conflict and who are exposed to poverty, malnutrition and lack of opportunities. Eighty percent of the pupils is from Deheishe and other refugee camps in the area and they have started to receive some students from Gaza. The team at Hope Flowers School uses its unique educational approach to face up to the difficult circumstances in Palestine as a direct result of the continuing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
The best way to donate is to go via the Spirit of Peace website.
The Shannon Trust
In 2008, the Prison Reform Trust reported that '48% of the prison population has a reading ability below that expected of an 11 year-old'. It has also been shown that an exceptionally high proportion of the 64% of prisoners that re-offend within two years of release have very poor reading skills. This is in large part a result of the fact that ex-offenders are three times more likely to re-offend if they are unemployed - and those who cannot read are generally unable to find a job.
As a congregation, we have raised funds for the Shannon Trust, who run the Toe-by-Toe Reading Plan, an award-winning peer mentoring programme, which encourages and supports prisoners who can read to give one-to-one tuition to prisoners who struggle to read.
Sevenoaks Welcomes Refugees
Sevenoaks Welcomes Refugees is a local charity formed in 2017 originally to help support refugees from Syria resettling in the Sevenoaks district, as part what is now the UK Government's global UK Resettlement Scheme. They are also helping refugees from Afghanistan and Ukraine to resettle in our area. They are a small and growing organisation, with about 160 active volunteers currently helping to support the resettlement of 12 refugee families from Syria and Afghanistan in the Sevenoaks district area, and we have been working directly with 50 Ukrainian families.