SEVENOAKS UNITARIANS
A Spiritual Community for Open Minds
Social Justice
Unitarians are committed to social justice and recognise the urgency of the present moment in relation to the environment, the effects of war, the rise of inequality and the mental health and loneliness crises. 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. Eleanor is actively involved in Unitarians for Climate Justice (U4CJ) and personally supports Unitarians for Justice for Palestine. To know more about those groups get in touch.
Some charities are particularly close to the hearts of members of the congregation. We support: Spirit of Peace, Sevenoaks Welcomes Refugees; Send-a-Child-to-Hucklow; The Shannon Trust.
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.
Some of our members are active volunteers with the families.
We have recently raised more than 1000£ at a lunch we hosted at the Meeting House
One of our members, Heather-Jane Ozanne is the founder and CEO of Spirit of Peace dedicated to creating individual and community flourishing and wellbeing, through innovative events, sharing skills and encouraging others to work together for the common good. Spirit of Peace have a special focus on bringing majority and minority communities together to foster understanding, harmonious community and international relationships through the following programmes:
Community Cohesion; Kingian Nonviolence Arts at the Intersection
Flourishing.Global Friends for Peace and Global Flourishing Oxford Three Faiths Encounter
We are very lucky to support and co-host Spirit of Peace events in the Sevenoaks area whenever possible.
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.
The fund offers children who would never afford a holiday to spend time in nature and with meaningful group activities regardless of their religious beliefs or background.
The children who attend are recommended by their teachers or local authorities and feedback on these events has been overwhelmingly positive.
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.