With a long history of supporting local people in need, Lea Road Community Church’s latest venture comes as no surprise.
A lottery grant of more than £200,000 has enabled the church to establish Together In Penn Fields, a project designed to develop its existing work and meet the needs of new and emerging communities in the Penn Fields area of Wolverhampton.
Set up in December 2021, the project runs an array of activities: youth clubs for children and young people; parenting and toddler groups in partnership with the Wolves Foundation Charity; adult education classes including basic skills training and interview techniques in partnership with Wolverhampton Adult Education; and groups for refugees and migrants.
Daniel Holmes, Project Coordinator, explains why, despite all that the church already does – its food project gained a Community Project Award last year – this project was set up.
“Lea Road serves a diverse community and people were struggling post Covid. We’ve got different rates of crime and young people need a safe space. Refugees, migrants and parents all needed somewhere.
“Lea Road has always been known for being a community church so we do what we can to help people and bring people together.”
The church does have a long history of meeting community needs. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the then minister offered the unemployed a warm place to meet and find support; Mencap and Age concern launched support groups there in the 1960s; when others in the city were excluding young people from the Windrush generation, the church hosted a large youth club for them; it has and still works with refugees, and for nearly 11 years has run drop-ins for the city’s Roma communities.
“We have 16-18 children every week attending our youth groups,” continues Daniel. “We started with nine and they’re bringing their friends who are telling others and the club is growing and growing.
“There’s nine-15 families dropping in each week with their 0-11-year-olds, 15-20 young people of secondary school age using the youth groups, and people coming in to learn basic English and more. It really is exciting and all free.”
Daniel is working with large-scale community organisations in the area, including Transforming Communities Together and its subsidiary Places of Welcome, to put on a community open day on 2nd April with the hopes of attracting hundreds of people to the project to offer them support, signposting, guidance and opportunities.
“I’m over the moon and feel like God is working wonders in this vital setting,” adds Daniel. “I work 9-5 on my own, then stay and work with the youth workers and to meet people who are using the project, so when I do I feel like God is right there in the middle of it.
“Post Covid, our project has come just at the right time. The whole church congregation is behind me, and things are moving in the right direction.”
Daniel is also liaising with Wolverhampton Council, Wolverhampton Homes, Penn Climate Action and other organisations about a community green grant he is submitting to improve three green spaces in the area for community use.
“There’s lots more to come,” he says.