Warm Welcome at St Philip & St James Church

Aim

We are St Philip and St James Church, the parish church for Alderley Edge in Cheshire.

Who are we?

We are St Philip and St James Church, the parish church for Alderley Edge in Cheshire.

Community impact

Below is a list of the members of our community we hope to reach with the money we raise from this fundraising activity.

• Poor people.  We offer practical assistance of free food and small grants to people who are struggling to make ends meet.
• Lonely people.  We offer activities which allow people to come together and this is especially helpful for people who are recently bereaved. 
• People with poor mental health.  These activities are inclusive of people with poor mental health and we can signpost people onto free counselling sessions where appropriate.
• People with dementia.  These people form an important section of those who come for lunch and the singing group.  A local care home brings residents to these activities on a regular basis.
• Families with young children.  The toddler sessions offer support to families with young children, and especially grandparents who are caring for grandchildren and thereby enabling parents to go to work.  There is some cross over between these families and those who use the food bank.

Why are we crowdfunding?

Since the cost-of-living crisis became apparent in our community we have been running the following:

A Food Bank based in our parish rooms which offers free food to people in need.

A Solidarity Fund based on donations from the local community to help poor families in crisis with grants of up to £300 each.

A Free Community Lunch every Wednesday which takes place at the back of our church.

This lunch forms part of Warm Wednesdays when we turn the heating on in church and host the following activities:

• An Art Group
• Singing Group
• Local History Group
• Toddler and Carer sessions run on a different day in our parish rooms.
• Free Counselling Sessions are offered to people who are especially vulnerable.

How we’ll spend the money raised

• Heating.  Running more activities than usual in our church building and the parish rooms means having the heating on more.
• Cleaning.   More activities and especially activities with food means more cleaning.  We have given our cleaner a cost of living pay rise of 10% for 2023.
• Publicity.  Our part-time parish administrator devotes time each week to publicising these activities.
• Maintenance.  Increased use of our boiler will generate higher maintenance costs.
• Insurance.

This project successfully funded on 29th March 2023