St Paul’s Lisburn supports Baby Basics

Saturday December 29th 2018

In the last couple of months Baby Basics has had a huge amount of support from several churches in our diocese, one of which was St Paul’s in Lisburn.

St Paul’s rector the Rev Arthur Young undertook to do Baby Basics over the Harvest period and many organisations in the church joined in the 4-week challenge.

Sister Karen Webb from Connect Base visited the church back in October to tell the congregation about the diocesan project and how it is helping needy families in the Belfast area. The church then took on the challenge with gusto and got lots of organisations involved including the Girls’ Brigade and the Toddler group.

Diocesan Children’s Officer Jill Hamilton visited the Girls’ Brigade and explained the Baby Basics Belfast story to two different age groups. The girls were extremely enthusiastic and excited about being involved in supporting the project. A huge thanks to Alison Stevenson, Captain of the GB, and all the leaders who were so willing to encourage and support the girls in this endeavour.

Heather Marsden, who oversees the toddler group ‘Lots of Tots’ helped to co-ordinate the whole church collection and sorted out all the donations. Heather also organised a van to transport everything to the Connect Base as there was so much!!

Jill said: “We are hugely grateful to all the organisations and the members of the church congregation in St Pauls’ who took part in the Baby Basics 4-week challenge. Their donations gave us a huge much needed boost as our stock of donations had been almost completely depleted.

“The donations given by St Paul’s are already going out to families who have recently been referred to Baby Basics. We continue to be very busy with referrals from agencies across Belfast.”

Jill said the Christmas period can be especially busy. “It is wonderful to be able to help families in need and through this tremendous effort from St Paul’s we will be able to deliver help to dozens of families in the coming weeks and months,” she said.