Coventry Asylum and Refugee Action Group (CARAG), are setting up the first UK migrant-led destitution housing project. With the night shelter closed due to Covid and the council beginning to evict people who were accommodated under the everyone-in scheme earlier this year, CARAG are urgently looking for landlords willing to rent to a charity. They have the funding available and residents ready to move in, and can put prospective landlords in touch with an expert to answer any concerns they might have about right to rent restrictions.
If you might be able to help – please get in touch via caragcoventry@gmail.com . Please pass on to your networks.
If you might be able to help – please get in touch via caragcoventry@gmail.com . Please pass on to your networks.
As a valued supporter we are delighted to be able to give you the first opportunity to own Medaille Trusts A Taste Of Home, this truly unique cookbook, giving you a culinary journey around the world through the eyes of victims of modern slavery.
A Taste of Home contains an array of tantalising recipes, from our clients along with their stories and an insight into why these recipes are so important to them. Supported by Journalist and Broadcaster Louise Hulland and Celebrity Chef Ainsley Harriot, this is a truly fascinating read as well as a fantastic cook book with recipes you won’t find anywhere else. All profits go directly to support victims of Modern Slavery living in Medaille Trust Safe Houses Thank-you for your Support Order your copy today. Download the Order Form and send in via cheque to below address or click for email, ensuring all details are included from order form and make your payment by BACS: comms@medaille-trust.org.uk 
Renewing the Covenant: Churches and the Building of Local Relationships
Thank you for attending our webinar last month. As promised, here is the video and supporting materials: - watch video - download the accompanying letter: Renewing the Covenant: Churches and the Building of Local Relationships - read the chat record from the zoom participation - download our short guide to one-to-one conversations In the webinar our challenge was to invite congregations to begin to have one-to-one conversations to get to know people in the neighbourhood. If you feel you can take this step in your own setting, please write and tell us what happens. Feel free to share this material: it's all in one place on this page of our website.. Keep in touch: we would love to hear your reflections - what you say will shape our next steps. Please write c/o: our volunteer Annette McBride, at annette@togetherforthecommongood.co.uk Connect: if on reading the chat, there is someone you would like to connect with, please send a message via Annette who will be pleased to act as a go-between. We will be continuing this conversation and keep you in the loop. Every blessing, Jenny Jenny Sinclair founding director Together for the Common Good www.togetherforthecommongood.co.uk, @T4CG Registered Charity No.1172113. Our next newsletter is due out in a week or two. To subscribe, click here. 
Thank you for everything you have done, and continue to do, for CAFOD within your parish. Your support is essential so that we can help the most vulnerable across the world. The coronavirus (COVID-19) lockdown and social distancing are changing the way we gather as a Catholic community and how we can fundraise in parishes. You are on the frontline of this. We need your help to find out how we can continue to respond in the best way possible. If you have 5 minutes available please could you complete our survey on how parish life has changed for you? Your responses will help us plan and react to the ever changing circumstances we are facing due to coronavirus, how we can share information about our coronavirus emergency appeal and also, importantly, stay in touch with our wonderful parish community. Thank you so much for your support during this difficult time. Please complete parish survey Please stay safe and well, Love and prayers, Jenny CAFOD Parish Support Team Please follow link to CAFOD Emergency appeal |
Lancaster Diocesan
Faith and Justice Commission Dear Friends I have attached a copy of the October F&J E-Bulletin. I hope you will be able to take the time to read and share the newsletter. Reports and newsletters mentioned in this issue are available at http://www.lancasterfaithandjustice.co.uk/newsletter/ as well as the October NW NJPN Newsletter and the NJPN Newsletter. Also a copy of the newsletter in Word as some find this easier to use the information Peace & best wishes Maggie Margaret McSherry Administrator Lancaster Diocesan Faith& Justice Commission St Bernadette’s Parish House, Bowerham Road Lancaster LA1 4HT E: lfjcmm@gmail.com Office T: 07885809935 M:07864012385 
Brushstrokes Community Project Strengthening and supporting refugees and migrants across Sandwell, West Birmingham and beyond News Letter - October 2020 News Letter - September 2020 News Letter - August 2020 Phone: 0121 565 2234 E-mail: info@brushstrokessandwell.org.uk Website: www.brushstrokessandwell.org.uk Brushstrokes Community Project is part of Father Hudson’s Care Father Hudson’s Care is a working name of Father Hudson’s Society Registered in England & Wales, no. 1653388 Registered charity no. 512992 Reaching out to provide Social Care in the Catholic Archdiocese of Birmingham 
Restore's vision is for a society into which all refugees and asylum seekers are welcomed, valued and integrated. Please follow link to: Restore News June 2020 Jeremy, Rachel, Andy and Geraldine Restore Staff Team |
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Live streaming of Mass
Make an Act of Spiritual Communion – This can be done whilst you watch a live stream of Mass being offered. You can make an act of Spiritual Communion by saying the following prayer: “My Jesus, I believe that You are present in the Most Holy Sacrament. I love You above all things, and I desire to receive You into my soul. Since I cannot at this moment receive You sacramentally, come at least spiritually into my heart. I embrace You as if You were already there and unite myself wholly to You. Never permit me to be separated from You.” Coronavirus Situation/ResourcesHere is a link to the Catholic Bishops Conference website. 
Resources from Pax Christi US. Click on image to follow link
Practice: Lamentation for a Time of Crisis
Intelligently responding to the Coronavirus demands that we access resources of physical, emotional and spiritual resilience. One practice Christianity has developed to nurture resilience is lamentation. Prayers of lamentation arise in us when we sit and speak out to God and one another—stunned, sad, and silenced by the tragedy and absurdity of human events. . . Without this we do not suffer the necessary pain of this world, the necessary sadness of being human. Walter Brueggemann, my favourite Scripture teacher, points out that even though about one third of the Psalms are psalms of “lament,” these have been the least used by Catholic and Protestant liturgies. We think they make us appear weak, helpless, and vulnerable, or show a lack of faith. So we quickly resort to praise and thanksgiving. We forget that Jesus called weeping a “blessed” state (Matthew 5:5) and that only one book of the Bible is named after an emotion: Jeremiah’s book of “Lamentation.” In today's practice, Reverend Aaron Graham reflects on the elements found in prayers of lament. I hope that you will find in his words and in the text of Psalm 22 a way to voice your own complaints, requests, and trust in God, who is always waiting to hear. We need to be reminded that our cries are not too much for God. [God] laments with us. In fact, [God] wants us to come to the [Divine Presence] in our anger, in our fear, in our loneliness, in our hurt, and in our confusion. Each lamenting Psalm has a structure;
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest. Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel. In you our fathers trusted; they trusted, and you delivered them. To you they cried and were rescued; in you they trusted and were not put to shame (Psalm 22:1-5). 
At Pax Christi, we are committed to nonviolence and we accept Pope Francis’ challenge to ‘set aside every act of violence in thought, word and deed, whether against our neighbours or against God’s creation.’
Theresa Electronic copies of the booklet and resources are here http://paxchristi.org.uk/product-category/peace-sunday-2020/ |
You may have heard that Traidcraft will finish trading at the end of the year and that may have frightened you to death. How can we continue to run our Traidcraft Stall or get supplies? Fear not! The information we have received from Traidcraft is that, although details are not yet available, we WILL be able to continue to get supplies, although the set-up will be different. However, the new arrangements in 2019 will take time to put in place, so we think it would be wise to stock up before the end of the year. If you want any further information, you can phone their Customer Services on 0191 491 0855. "Our Common Home: Caring for God's Creation" an example of a Study Course for Lent that you may find interesting. 
GREENPEACE
Clingfilmed coconuts? Shrink-wrapped turnips? Cauliflower 'steaks' in plastic bags? Many of us have experienced the frustration of unpacking our weekly shop and finding we're filling our fridges, rubbish bins and recycling with pointless plastic - and it's no surprise when supermarkets are producing 800,000 tonnes of plastic a year! Enough is enough. Will you help expose supermarkets' ridiculous packaging practices? Here's how: 1. Next time you spot some excessive plastic packaging, take a photo. 2. If you use Twitter, tweet the photo using #PointlessPlastic (don't forget to tag the supermarket too!) 3. If you don't use Twitter, you can either post it on another social media channel (like Facebook or Instagram) or alternatively email your picture to us at packaging.uk@greenpeace.org and we'll post it for you! Some people are concerned that plastic is necessary to reduce food waste - but a new study has shown that in some cases it might actually be making the problem worse. When plastic packaging requires food to be a specific size or shape, edible food is rejected because it doesn't look the right way. And whilst some people need pre-prepared fruit and vegetables because of mobility issues, no one needs them to be provided in plastic. If hundreds of us share these pictures of pointless plastic packaging online, together we can show supermarkets that their use of plastic is out of control, and that their customers have had enough. 'Unwrapped: How throwaway plastic is failing to solve Europe's food waste problem (and what we need to do instead)' Link to Green Peace video clip on reusable energy |
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The Birmingham Diocesan Justice and Peace Commission is funded by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Birmingham and the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD) and is a member of the Caritas - Archdiocese of Birmingham Network