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Olympics 2012: Games Pastors required:
In our expressions of ministry, sustainability often requires routine and steady commitment. But there are also times when opportunities arise from extra ordinary events and we have to seize the moment, even in our routine chaplaincy settings. The Olympics provides us with just such an opportunity through the appointment of Games Pastors.
One critical and major element of that is the provision of over 1000 Games Pastors to cover major airports, rail stations and critical pedestrian corridors. Conceptually, Games Pastors are based on the Street Pastor/Street Angel model and will operate in pairs with proper support and supervision.
This may be something you get the prompting to respond to yourself, but if not maybe someone or a whole group in the network to which you relate to would be available to respond. This is an opportunity to serve with our core competencies and skills as chaplains in the Games Pastor model (drawn from the Street Pastors model) and demonstrate that they are a flexible expression of authentic Christian Mission.
We need to engage with the training days mentioned below to be a Games Pastor. To that end please pass on this information and the attached poster as widely as possible.
There will be a one day training for ALL Games Pastors and the dates for games pastors training are as follows:
4 Feb: Crawley; 3 March: Nottingham; 10 March: Wolverhampton & London- central;
17 March London – Greenwich & Newcastle; 24 March Barnsley & Weymouth;
31st March Bolton & London – East; 21st April Swindon and 28 April Cambridge
Dates for Scotland and Wales will be announced in due course.
We are hoping that some Chaplains will want to offer their expertise and be involved in this role but also and perhaps especially, I would be grateful if you could encourage as many people as you can to get involved from your own local networks. It is not just about being involved in the Olympics, it is also about capacity building – so potentially having several hundred people who have done the training and had the experience – will be a huge resource for the church locally. Please do whatever you can.
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Nightstop North East is a project run by Depaul UK and since forming in 2008 has provided over 1,000 nights of accommodation to some of the region’s most vulnerable young people, all provided by committed volunteer 'hosts' from local communities. In 2009 alone Nightstop services throughout the UK provided over 6800 nights of accommodation in volunteers homes, to over 1000 young people. Volunteers gave over 100,000 hours of their time.
Nightstop volunteers are ordinary people who are willing to open the door of their home to help young and vulnerable people in need, or who offer their time to help local Nightstop services in other ways. All volunteers will undertake specific training before commencing their volunteering role with a local Nightstop team.
Depaul Nightstop UK believes that the involvement of volunteers will: Enrich homeless people's experiences by offering them extra practical, creative, supportive and inspirational opportunities. Provide new skills, experiences and perspectives to young and vulnerable people, volunteers and staff and Strengthen links with the diverse communities in which we work.
We are constantly looking for volunteers to help us continue with this valuable service and I would be very grateful if you would display posters in your organisation so we can let people know about this valuable service and to recruit new volunteers.
It would also be great if we could come and talk to members of your organisation about the Nightstop service and give you a more in depth view of what the service is about and how it can help people in your community.
If you would like to know more about the service or to find out other ways to help please click on this link to the nightstop website http://www.depaulnightstopuk.org/
Click to download the NightStop poster as a PDF
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