Preparing for the school summer holidays? The United Reformed Church (URC) Children’s and Youth Work (CYW) committee offers grants of £50 or £100 to churches needing support to run holiday clubs.
The CYW Team also offers free resources that contain suggestions for a holiday club for children aged five-11-year-olds, and materials for intergenerational, toddlers, young people aged 11-14 and vintage holiday clubs.
Here’s a round-up of how some local churches have spent their grants and used the resources:
Northern Synod
Deb Doyle, of Roker URC in Sunderland, said: “The £100 grant that we received for our summer activities [in 2022] made such a fantastic difference to the project.
“We were able to purchase some lovely outdoor games for the garden and plenty of resources for our craft buffet.
“For Roker Life, that £100 went a long way to enhance our delivery and bring smiles to children’s faces.”
St John the Evangelist Kingston Park, an LEP in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, used its grant to spend three days looking at stories from Luke’s Gospel.
National Synod of Scotland
Park URC in Lanarkshire, used ‘Time Travellers’, CYW’s 2021 holiday theme to run its activities.
Carrie King, Park URC’s holiday club leader, said: “We were able to include refugee children from Iran, Africa, and Hong Kong which was fabulous.
“The children really enjoyed doing cooking, games, discussions, singing, praying, many different crafts, eating together, and listening to the stories.
“They liked the variety of storytelling the materials gave, and it was wonderful looking at each story from the point of view of a child as it really helped them identify it. We also supplemented the material with ideas from Families on Faith Adventures which was superb.”
Saughtonhall URC used its grant to fund a visit to a zoo enabling the theme of ‘caring for God’s diverse creations’ to be a hands-on, interactive, and memorable experience for children and adults.
Sharon Lloyd, Programme Sssistant for CYW, said: “Whether the holiday clubs ran during the morning, over lunch or all day it was clear from the children and family’s responses that each holiday club were really enjoyed by those who used them.”