I think perhaps we don’t realise what a potential there is – not just for the church to be supporting the school and for the school to be providing a way into church life, but to be thinking about bringing Kingdom transformation to the wider community itself.
Revd Ed Dix, St Luke’s Millwall
For the last few years, St Luke’s CE Primary’s Year 6 pupils have volunteered with the local night shelter, run by Christian charity GrowTH – a brilliant example of children being involved in a community social action.
The children specifically volunteered when the night shelter was being hosted by St Luke’s Church, Millwall.
You can hear more from their minister-in-charge, The Revd Ed Dix, below, as well as school staff and members of the GrowTH team – and most importantly, from some of the children themselves.
St Luke's Church & School, Millwall, partnering with a homelessness night shelter
The Compassionate Communities team decided to produce this video to celebrate all of these fantastic people, highlighting what strong relationships between churches, schools and local charities can achieve together.
We also hope that other schools will tell us about how their own pupils are involved in community social action – or feel inspired to start something new after watching this video!
If you want to learn more about getting children involved in church-based social action projects, please contact the Compassionate Communities Team.
You can also download their latest community ministry toolkit, Engaging school children in church-based social action projects here. It includes an example risk assessment (kindly provided by St Luke’s CE Primary School), FAQs and links to further resources.