At the centre of Kore is a website which provides fresh ideas, new ways to engage and opportunities to join the discussion. The website is packed with resources to inspire and challenge, most of which can be downloaded free. These include animations, iphone apps, videos, music, photography, worship ideas and action campaigns.

Kore also provides consultation for those seeking to engage with a post-modern world filled with creativity, innovation and change. Working as catalysts they provoke thought and discussion, helping others to develop vision and strategy.

www.kore.uk.com

It was founded, in 1958, by Dr. Clement F. Moss, OBE, Veronica’s father, who with her mother, Ingegerd, worked as missionaries in India for forty years. It has thriving out-patient services, and a reputation for high quality general, trauma, reconstructive and orthopaedic surgery, eye surgery, general medical and paediatric departments, obstetric and neonatal departments, and a large cancer department with a cobalt unit and a newly installed brachytherapy unit. It has a well-established community health and development programme. Teaching hospitals and universities send post-graduate students for clinical placements and training in their specialities to the hospital. Teams from the UK (orthopaedic) and Germany (maxillo-facial surgery) visit annually to conduct ‘surgical camps’ and teams from the hospital conduct eye and cancer ‘camps’ in other parts of the state. The ‘Smile Train’ supports the cleft lip and palate reconstructive surgery programme, which changes the lives of hundreds of children every year.

The leadership of the hospital has a strong commitment to continuing the Christian witness that has always been part of its motivation. It needs support for this aspect of its work, and also for its medical and paediatric work. The children’s ward and the malnutrition unit have been re-painted, with murals showing Noah’s Ark, Jesus with the children, and other pictures from local stories. The Head of Medicine, Dr. Prafulla Parmath, visited us for the first two weeks of July 2010. She came to undertake a clinical placement at Southend Hospital in the Infectious Diseases and HIV department, and also at Fairhavens Hospice. Her visit was paid for by The Friends of Padhar Hospital Trust. (Veronica is its Chair).

www.padharhospital.org

Operating five days a week with a high staff to member ratio, our aim is to stimulate the mental, physical and social skills of our members in an age appropriate environment.  We achieve this by providing a wide range of recreational activities such as regular day trips and restaurant visits, snooker, table tennis, arts and crafts including pottery, games and quizzes, dancing, live entertainment, cookery and gardening. 

www.peacefulplace.co.uk

Help 4 Hurting Children (Restore Project), Uganda
Shoeburyness & Thorpe Bay Baptist Church has been supporting the work of this Project since September 2009, when Ruth Sims and Sue Bonner went to Uganda in response to God’s call and an invitation from the Minister of Health and the President of Uganda to help them improve the hospital care for children with severe acute malnutrition. The church has recently promised to support them through 2010.

Malnutrition has become a serious problem in Uganda, with an estimated 42% of children under 5 suffering from varying degrees of malnutrition. This is due to poverty, a long history of civil wars, many tropical diseases and disruption of healthcare services. Since the early 1980’s, the AIDS pandemic has added to these problems by decimating many communities, leading to many children having to be brought up by grandmothers, aunties, or older siblings, many still in their teens.

Mwanamugimu is the paediatric Nutrition Unit for severe acute malnutrition at Mulago Hospital, the country’s main referral and training centre. Competing government priorities has meant that the hospital services have had little investment. The unit is seriously understaffed and under-resourced, with a lack of essential equipment. At times, the mortality rate for children admitted to the unit is as high as 40%.

A great deal has already been achieved, not least a complete reversal of the initial hostility that the staff felt towards any interventions from outside. After a review of services and survey of premises, priorities have been agreed with the Director and staff, essential emergency equipment has been bought and installed, the emergency room has been cleaned and re-painted with beautiful murals, volunteers have been recruited to support staffing levels, and training has been started. Keymed, a local medical equipment firm, has donated £18,000 for medical equipment, plus a large container that was been filled with donated goods, and shipped to Uganda in June 2010.

To visit Help 4 Hurting Children (Restore Project) website click here. Fiona Bannister will send out a weekly news update and prayer letter.

If you would like to be included on the mailing list, please contact Fiona Bannister via the church office.

Samaritans Purse
Samaritans Purse is an organisation working through local churches throughout Africa, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, proclaiming and demonstrating the love of God amongst impoverished communities.

Their development work provides long-term solutions when it comes to water and sanitation, HIV/AIDS and sustainable livelihoods. Their relief efforts bring help to victims of disasters and emergencies.

They also have an annual shoebox appeal called “Operation Christmas Child”. The appeal encourages, churches, schools, workplaces and community groups to wrap shoeboxes and fill them with gifts, between September and November. These are then sent to underprivileged children in 18 countries.

www.samaritans-purse.org.uk

Chattabox is a Christian holiday run by Scripture Union for children aged 8-11. It takes place at Moorlands College, Sopley, Dorset. Members of the church have helped run the holiday for a number of years.

www.scriptureunion.org.uk

SIL Sudan
SIL Sudan is part of SIL International and operates, as its name implies, in Sudan, geographically the largest country in Africa.

Sudan covers an area the size of Western Europe. It is a divided country so far as its population is concerned, the northern half being predominantly ethnically Arab and Muslim, and the southern population being African and Christian and animist. As a result of civil war the Christian population has suffered greatly and many remain in primitive refugee camps situated around the capital Khartoum. Others in the south are eking out a subsistence existence in the face of continuing violence. Besides Arabic, there are more than 130 living languages in Sudan, many of which have never been put into writing.

Members of SIL are volunteers who use their specialist skills to live and work alongside the various ethnic communities to help in putting their languages into writing, thus enabling the people to become literate and so preserve their cultures and languages. Materials that SIL helps to translate include books and booklets for educational programs, stories related to culture and folklore, health and community development resources and Scripture texts. SIL works with tribal representatives to facilitate the translation of Scripture in contexts where such activity is within the scope of SIL’s working agreements and where translation of Scripture texts has been identified as a needed resource for spiritual development.

No members of SIL receive salaries or allowances from their central office and all are personally responsible for raising their own support from their home churches and interested Christian friends. David and Mary Fryett have, in the past, made three extended visits to Sudan to help in the work and they continue to maintain contact with both Sudanese and expatriate workers. Our church has continued to give generous support to this important work. All our donations are used to support the Sudanese workers who work alongside the expatriates in the literacy and translation programmes.

www.sil.org

South Africa Project
Rachael Fredlund founded and runs the Mseleni Children’s Home also the charity Luisandia Kumntwana, the former has between 35 and 59 children aged from 6 months to 19 years. The latter offers support for children who are orphans and places them with a Foster Parent (usually only a mother).

The Charity is also involved with a local high school that is run by a Christian Headmaster.

Our Church is looking to send out teams of people to help in any way possible, whether it be house building, school work, bible study, craftwork or other areas.

Click here to see the full pdf brochure giving more details about the work at Mseleni
It will open in a new window

Who can be involved?

Everyone:
• Men – building etc.
• Women – teaching, craftwork etc.
• Young people – Gap year and school holidays,
• Small Groups – prayers, encouragement and fundraising.

Benefits
• Help and support to the Home and school.
• Outworking of our church’s Mission Statement.
• Opportunity for people to become involved in the “sharp end” of overseas mission.

www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mseleni

Tearfund also works through local churches and Christian groups here in the UK, encouraging them to respond to Jesus’ call to look after the poorest and most vulnerable. Tearfund is in partnership with UK charity Liveablility to form the Community Mission Partnership, helping churches and Christians to learn about the causes of, and solutions to poverty and injustice. Tearfund offers them ways to respond: by giving, speaking out in advocacy, and in prayer.

Shoeburyness & Thorpe Bay Baptist Church supports Tearfund once a year through a collection at Christmas and also uses Tearfund as its main vehicle for giving when a major disaster occurs (e.g. Haiti Earthquake in 2010)

Steve and Laura Cook are ‘South-East’ Tearfund volunteers and coordinators and work with Tearfund to help carry out things such as training events for other volunteers, they speak/lead sermons on Tearfund’s behalf in other South-East churches and help resource regional and national events. Within STBC Laura and Steve have run a prayer room around their ‘Make Life Flow’ Campaign; have spoken in church services on behalf of Tearfund and hope to run their ‘Just People’ course with young people in the next year.

www.tearfund.org

Our mission is to inspire compassion for the suffering of the poor around the world, converting compassion into hope and hope into direct action through personal giving, to reach and change the lives of individuals who have no, or few, options for survival.
ROPE is a volunteer charity currently working in numerous countries through a network of partnerships (ROPEholders), providing grass roots support for widows, orphans, refugees, the sick, the homeless and the unemployed.

At ROPE nothing is deducted for UK administration or expenses, thus 100% of gifts go for the benefit of the poor. UK administration costs are met by a separate fund: 'Friends of ROPE'.

ROPE has enabled our church to send money overseas to help vulnerable individuals who are not part of government recognised organisations.

www.rope.org.uk