Homeless people in Ilford were treated to a chicken roast dinner, Easter eggs and gifts on Saturday 3rd August. Around 40 local homeless people turned up to receive the hearty meals and seasonal extras. We also shared a number of Gideon’s bibles with 11 distributed that weekend.
Our Meals for the homeless project is now over a year old but due to a decrease in volunteers since the lockdown has lifted we have made a decision to terminate the project. The number of volunteer hours needed for the project is now simply beyond our capacity and we can no longer afford to run the project, which has a large number of associated costs. Our project will now end on the 30th of April 2021.
Juliet Chowdhry. Trustee for the British Asian Christian Association, said:
“It was wonderful to share another Easter with our Homeless visitors.
“We prayed with anyone who wanted prayer and served warm solid meals for them all.
“The Easter eggs were a wonderful chocolate gift for all of them and they all appreciated them very much.
“It was wonderful seeing how many of them desired a copy of our free New Testament books donated by Gideon’s International.
“We thank God for the wonderful change we are seeing in the lives of many of our local homeless.”
We have advised our regular homeless visitors of alternative locations from which they can obtain food bank produce and warm cooked meals and we will continue to pray for them.
It will be an emotional time for all our volunteers, however some of the Christian volunteers who have helped us are creating a new group that will begin the same work at a new location. If you are interested in supporting their work please email us here and we will pass on your details to them. The project at it’s peak served 65 people a day twice a day and featured on BBC News during the Coronavirus pandemic. We have been working with many partner organisations to ensure that homeless people have had health checks, treatment for for hepatitis, AIDS and Syphilis. Our regular visitors also had access to professional counselling and support through a weekly visit from Westminster Drug Project. We also helped 21 homeless people access free homes made available by the local council and funded by the Government during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of them are now in permanent housing.
Please keep these homeless people in your prayers.
