Urgent Recovery

Aim: Urgent building work required to repair and secure our community space.

Lewisham Unity is a community of Unitarians and friends in Lewisham, southeast London. We are progressive, welcoming, and inclusive, providing a safe space for our members and friends to explore their spirituality and make meaningful connections. We also provide low-cost hall rental space for local users, including the NHS, Lewisham council, and groups running sessions such as yoga, meditation, and dance. 

We are currently facing severe financial difficulties that are threatening our future. Please help us get through this rough patch so that we can continue to grow and become the Beloved Community that will embrace and serve anyone looking for a liberal spiritual home in Lewisham. We have matched funding from two generous donors for up to £2000, so that is our primary goal, but we would be thrilled to go beyond that. Thank you!

Our core community is supported by a volunteer committee and a part-time paid minister, Rev Julio Torres. Rev Julio is inspired by the Poor People's Campaign, begun by Martin Luther King, Jr in the 1960s and recently revived. The basis of this campaign is that the Beloved Community can exist once an intersectional approach is taken to social justice to address economic justice and social discrimination (including racism, sexism, and homophobia). Then humanity can live with abundance, peace, and equality. His theology can be summed up as a pantheist Unitarian Universalist liberation theology.

The main source of income for our community comes from the rent of the flat above our main hall. In 2017, the committee made the bold decision to turn the flat into bedsits and work with local refugee organisations to find former asylum seekers to rent out the rooms at charitable rates. This arrangement worked very well until the Covid pandemic, when our community went through big changes and reduced oversight of the building meant that it became complicated to manage the turnover of tenants in the flat. Meanwhile, we kept up with basic maintenance of the flat and even gave our tenants rent relief, as they had reduced income during lockdown.

By the time we were back in the building full-time in 2022, we had a new minister, new committee chair, reduced membership (due to post-pandemic London flight), and a flat that was in very rough shape. We did some basic repairs, but realised that we could no longer manage to run the flat as bedsits and we needed to empty the flat to do bigger needed updates. 

It has taken us almost three years for each of the three remaining tenants to move out, meanwhile we have been paying all of the bills for the flat and receiving much reduced rent. This situation is about to be resolved, but our finances are in a critical situation and our building needs urgent repair work. This includes securing our front and back doors, repairing water damage in the disabled toilet, and installing an access ramp in the front. 

Thank you for helping us get through this rough patch so that we can once again focus on building back our welcoming, inclusive community!

Funding method

Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made by 9th August 2025 at 9:30am