Our churches are the heartbeat of every community. We aim to respond to every social challenge that our communities face.

The uncertainty of the future will only magnify the hardship and vulnerability in our communities, and in particular for the elderly and children. We are already involved in helping to find solutions to knife and gun crime, and we expect that going forwards these issues will be at the fore-front of what we are working on.

Our renewable energy project will allow us to restore historical church buildings for future generations and fund our social action projects - locally, nationally and internationally.

Key things we will target with extra funding:

- Poverty

- Job losses

- Breakdowns in families

- Daily health and well-being support

- Day centres

- Drop in centres

- Mental health

- Excel 3 (supporting children to exit poverty through education and empowerment)

- Reducing loneliness

- Homelessness

- Soup kitchens

- Food banks

- Advocacy support

By carrying out this project we are future-proofing our churches. Our communities will benefit from this as we are able to continue to provide support and help where it is needed most.

Key facts of our current support for our local communities each year:

- We contribute over £10,000 to housing and homeless support

- Over £64,000 in food banks and clothing banks

- Over £24,000 on soup kitchen

- Over 30,000 volunteer hours

- Reaching over 10,000 people through day centres targeted to the elderly

- £4,500 to refugee and asylum support

- £18,000 to drop in centres and providing a place of welcome

- Over £18,000 to youth enrichment provisions and youth clubs

- Over £12,000 to pupil enrichment provisions and Saturday school

- Over £13,000 to healthcare, prison and school chaplaincy and street pastors

- £112,000 to community cohesion

- Over £10,000 to adult employability and upskilling training

- Over £6,000 to health and wellbeing support

*This has a potential to double or treble following this renewable energy project.

We currently have over 5,000 members of congregation who are active in their communities who support and are supported by our churches.

This is all about doing more for our people and this project is a way of us enabling this. This is a responsive approach to the changes we are all facing, not reactive to current state.

By carrying out this renewable energy project, we have a vision of what the future can hold for our churches and communities, and we hope to put more into the following:

- Equip our churches with the staffing and facilities to support the homeless, especially homeless young people through night shelter support and a support worker that will help them secure accommodation. These resources and support are especially important during the winter months.

- Provide solutions to improve the hardships that families suffer by meeting their immediate basic needs, such as food and clothing. Alongside this, help them work towards a long-term solution.

- Provide additional long-term solutions for people who are living in isolation and loneliness by developing befriending services and more drop in and day centres as a free service open to all.

- Provide more for people and their families who require mental health support within the community, such as befriending and crisis support.

- Be the hub of the community - open 7 days a week and able to help anyone and everyone who should need our support, no matter the situation or their needs.

- Helping young people to build more resilience and empower them so that they can go on to make positive life changing decisions that will help our young people navigate through life.

A bit about our partnerships and connections:

Church of God of Prophecy UK (CoGoP) are a vibrant Pentecostal church that prides itself in extending the love of God through their social action projects from food banks and soup kitchens to employability training and Saturday schools. Many of our churches provide counselling, advocacy and mediation provisions already. CoGoP social action works through RAFFA International Development charity to help raise awareness of community issues and facilitate solutions that help strengthen the family unit and supports the community as a whole.

RAFFA recognises that more needs to be done to protect, improve our environment and minimise the impact of global emissions for future generations.

EDEN, a division of RAFFA, has been established to help facilitate the installation of a variety of renewable energy technologies across the churches in the UK. By reducing their energy consumption and running cost they will be able to redirect their resources into more meaningful community provisions.

Greenio is a renewable energy hub, introduced to RAFFA via Orel UK to bring the vision to a reality. Their role has been to consult, manage, facilitate funding and install this renewable energy project from start to finish.

Thank you for reading through this and hearing our story. We hope you find it a worthy cause to donate to such a fantastic project and our doors are always open for you to visit.

RAFFA