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Its been a very busy time recently - hence the blog not being updated! I'm really sorry!!We have trained a further 25 volunteers over the past few months and now have a team of 52 representing 22 churches from the around the town. This awesome as now we can expand our work and go out Saturday nights! We have 8 teams and 10 leaders/ Co-leaders which is fantastic.
Our Commissioning service was great fun, the Bishop was in great form as was Sgt. Wheeler from TVP. We had over 100 in attendance as we commissioned the new recruits - well done all!
Last weekend we saw the the pastors going out for the first time on Saturday and by all accounts they had a great time. The Police and doorstaff have been asking us for the past few months "when are you guys coming out on Saturday, we need you guys!" So at last we were able to help, listen and care for those going out on a Saturday night.
Other news:
TKAP (Tackling Knifes Action Program) - is a Home Office multi-agency initiative to combat anit-social behaviour within towns and cities across the UK. We have been invited to attend these meetings and be part of the strategy to reduce anti-social behaviour within Reading - specifically at night. We are looking at a multi-agency project to set up a "safe-hut" within the town, talks about how to do this and locations are slowly progressing.
I've been to a few Rotary clubs around the town over the past few weeks and had a good time with them, visited numerous churches and now have a list of names for the next training batch - probably in the autumn sometime!? Watch this space!
We started our fund-raising initiative: "be one of the 100" the idea to give £10 a month, so far with have 16 donors raising £220 per month - AMAZING! A BIG Thank you to all!
A few of the many situations where we were able to help out:
- We continue to have good chats with Door staff and flyer-giver guys in towns – they are really friendly and enjoy our lollipops!
- We continue to develop good relationships with the security guys at the Station
- We were worried for an older lone drunk lady, who was heading to the car park worried was she was going to drive - we managed to get her to the taxi rank. The taxi driver was a bit nervous about taking a lone single drunk female and wanted one of us to join him - he only took her in the end by giving him a phone number he could contact us by. Fortunately no calls were made.
- Lone female sitting at the cross roads station road/ friar street about 3am- hadn't realised all her friends had gone home, so she called for a lift and we waited with her.
- Walked a lone paralytic lady home whom lived near by. The door staff called us up to help her out.
- Alerted police to a reveller starting a fight with door staff at a bar.
- Reunited a Spanish chap with friends who was being ill outside one of the bars.
- One young lad came up to us to repeatedly thank us for the work we are doing – he sees us every Friday and really appreciates the work we are doing – so well done all – people do notice us and see our good work.
- Able to help the Police and Ambulance with a young lady who had had a glass thrown at her and cut her forehead.
- Helped out a person who had drunk too much in a short space of time and was sleeping it off in the graveyard of St Mary Butt's, the CCTV Control room asked us to go to him, thankfully his friends found us and managed to get him into a Taxi safely.
Calmed 64 aggressing situations
Supported 149 vulnerable people
Handed out 114 pairs of flip flops
Handed out 78 bottles of water
Helped with 12 minor first-aid accidents
Handed out 46 space blankets
Picked up 443 glass bottles
Had contact with over 1700 people
Handed out over 1900 lollipops
Given away 100’s of widgets to prevent bottled drinks being spiked
