Where are they now? Click here for a list of Guild Members who have lost touch with College

 

St. Hilda's East Update given in Prayers by Rupert Williams

This morning I’d like to concentrate on saying a few words about the work of St. Hilda’s, and also to let you know some of the results of fundraising carried out by the College over the last year... St. Hilda's East is a busy community centre operating in the East End of London, a short walk away from Liverpool Street. Our link with College goes back over a century, 118 years to when CLC Guild members founded St. Hilda’s East, spending their time helping the poor and ill of those times. Nowadays St. Hilda’s continues to provide activities and services for people needing support in that part of the capital – from young people’s clubs, disabled groups, advice for individuals with personal or money problems, a mental health project, to social support for isolated older people through elderly day centres.

Over the last year St. Hilda’s East has benefited greatly from the College’s charitable fundraising – including being an annual beneficiary of events such as the College Fete and the last two year’s November fireworks events. The money received from these activities has been extremely helpful in helping us meet the costs of providing an outside play area for young children using our crèche. We have a very busy crèche – with nearly 100 children registered with it – providing play & learning opportunities for young children. For many years we have only been able to provide this service indoors, due to our outside area not being safe or usable for small children.

Now - thanks to funds received - we are developing a crèche outside play area (see photos above), with new surfacing, activity areas and planting. We are still working on the project and still raising funds to install toys in the playground, but it already looks very different. This is fantastic for the young children using our crèche as most of them do not have any gardens at home and there are few parks in our part of London.

We are also very grateful to all of you at College for the support you give through the Annual Gift Service – donating Christmas presents for our users. Everyone at St. Hilda’s really appreciates this support. Last December we used presents brought from College to the community centre by Rev. Tom Merry and the Vice

Principal, Sarah Roberts, for our children’s and pensioners’ Christmas parties – helping to make these events a great success. Many of the older people using the community centre live on their own, and being thought of this makes a big difference to them.

Some of you went to London last November to take part in a joint College/ St. Hilda’s concert which proved a great success – with the College Choir joining St.

Hilda’s users in some fantastic performances. We are hoping that this might become an annual event.   It’s a great opportunity to cement the links between our two institutions, and our users really enjoy the contact with girls & staff from the College.

Over recent years we have been delighted to welcome girls from College as volunteers at St. Hilda’s during holiday periods. We also had a first last summer when one of your teaching staff, Victoria Juckes joined us as well. St. Hilda’s has paid staff but relies greatly on volunteers to run a lot of our services for the community. These also present great opportunities for girls from College to gain experience that may help you when you leave school. Just one example is our advice service – we run an evening Legal Advice service with volunteers from a major law firm, and a daytime advice service providing help over issues such as money problems and housing.

If you are interested in volunteering in this or other St. Hilda’s activities during the Easter or Summer holidays – from just a few days to longer – do get in touch. We also have many other projects with volunteering opportunities – including our very active Girls Project which runs regular sessions from indoor arts and crafts to outdoors activities. Our Women’s Project provides a lifeline for many Bangladeshi women in the East End of London – for example running English classes. We have hosted volunteers in the past who not only have had a great time helping others, but have also been able to use their experience of community voluntary work when to support their applications to medical school.

One of our newer projects this year has been an inter-faith project called “Faiths United”. The area surrounding St. Hilda's East Community Centre has people of Muslims living there – and this project has strived to build links between people of Muslim, Christian and other faiths. This is a very timely project given the current problems and divisions in society – and a successful one. It has produced a short film called ’Brick Lane’. Some of you may have heard of Brick Lane – it’s famous for its Indian/Bengali restaurants and a book by Monica Ali  which is being turned into a film. People from different backgrounds talk about their beliefs and faiths in our St. Hilda’s film which is now being used as an educational tool in primary schools - and has recently been shown in a local cinema!

 

St. Hilda’s is called a multi-purpose community centre and it really is that. From early educational work with pre-school children to support for elderly people, there are some 18 different services and projects.  There are always new projects being developed as well - too many too mention all of them this morning but you can find out more by looking at our Annual Report on line at www.sthildas.org.uk

We would be delighted to hear from anyone – particularly if you are interested in visiting or volunteering. Just email us at mail@sthildas.org.uk or I’m sure Rev. Tom Merry would be very happy to put you in touch with us!