Category: General

On Monday 17th October Derby Diocese partnered with Financial Action & Advice Derbyshire and Public Health to help launch a national campaign ‘End Hunger UK’.

End Hunger UK is the brainchild of the UK Food Poverty Alliance made up of many national organisations, including: Child Poverty Action Group; Church Action on Poverty; Fareshare; First Steps Nutrition; Food Ethics Council; Fabian Commission on Food and Poverty; The Food Foundation; Food Matters; Nourish Scotland; Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming; Trussell Trust; Independent Food Aid Network and Magic Breakfast.

Th alliances’ vision is to live in a country where everyone has access to good food and no one goes to bed hungry.

You can find out more about the national campaign at End Hunger UK

Hope for Belper recently highlighted the campaign at a concert held by the ‘We Shall Overcome’ grouping of musicians who raised well over £200 for ‘The Basic Idea’ food bank.

Whilst no MPs were able to make the launch of the campaign an open letter is to be sent to all constituency offices highlighting the latest reports and statistics, and asking MPs to join the campaigns ‘Big Conversation’ with their constituents over the next few months.

We will post further details about further local events and what you can do to get involved on this site and our FB page Hope for Belper

It is now five years since the first post on the then newly-launched Hope for Belper blog went live and H4B officially came into being.

Since then, it has grown from a small group of Christians praying and planning to a partnership of eight churches alongside schools, the Town Council, local police and many friends and neighbours.

More than 50 volunteers are regularly involved in delivering the two main projects, ‘The Basic Idea’ and ‘Street Angels’ with more interest being shown all the time.

Over 30 separate projects or events have been facilitated by Hope over the years, with more than 70 young people attending Dreamschemes, in excess of 400 children and parents enjoying a film at the Ritz, over 3,000 cups of hot chocolate given away and around 350 families provided with crisis food boxes.

Hope for Belper chair Gareth Greenwood said:  “It has been a remarkable five years and (almost) entirely an absolute joy!  It has felt like a town coming even closer together and a local church embracing an opportunity to love, and love being a part of its community.

“Hope for Belper has been and is an amazing opportunity for the local church to act in unity bringing the Gospel alive in our town; God’s Spirit is achieving much through this generative friendship.  The message of the Gospel is one of grace and reconciliation spanning out of the millennia.  Five years is actually a very small jot in the expanse of time, so we can look forward to enjoying bringing Hope to Belper for a long while yet.”

Here’s a pictorial reminder of some of the projects we have undertaken in the course of those five years from our very first project – handing out cups of hot chocolate in the Market Place on New Year’s Eve 2007.

What they all have in common is an element of celebration and a strong sense of community and shared experience.

This year for some might already feel gloomy and even hopeless, with job losses and financial hardship.  However, the opportunities to practically love our neighbours as ourselves, have never been so numerous.

The Basic Idea has been going for two years now and has helped over 100 families get through tight financial circumstances.  Right at the moment we are short of one very simple thing – delivery boxes!

This is the sort I mean…

Most offices have piles of these everywhere, so we’d be very grateful if you could drop by with one or two from time to time… the food store is open from 3:00 pm till 4:30 pm on the fourth Sunday of each month (excluding this April as it happens).  Simply go down the side of Boots the Chemist and ring the Basic Idea bell by the white side door next to Hacketts Bar – we may take a few moments to open up, so please be patient.

If you can supply us a couple then JUST THE BOTTOMS – NO LIDS PLEASE thanks

If you want to know more about the project, go to ‘THE BASIC IDEA’ page.

You may also be interested to know that Hope for Belper are looking at working with the Police and the Town Council to provide some practical help and a listening ear on the streets on a Friday night through the national Street Pastors initiative.

Research is at an early stage, but if you would like to know more then go to ‘Street Pastors’ – alternatively, if things start to move positively on this project we will put further info on the projects page through the year.

Welcome to the weblog for Hope 08 Belper. Here you will be able to read about everything that’s happening locally as part of this national initiative designed to demonstrate God’s love for our towns, villages and communities by providing practical help for those around us.

We hope you will not only become a regular visitor here, but also that you will feel inspired to get involved yourself in one or more of the projects we are planning. You may even want to help put together a new project! A list of ideas can be found here on our Go for it! page.

At our Projects page you will find listed all the activities that are being planned in Belper for the forthcoming year.

More information about what Hope 08 Belper is all about can be found here. On this site you will also be able to check out what is happening in Hope 08 nationally and also within the wider Derby Diocese.

Finally, we would welcome your feedback both on this site and on Hope 08 Belper as a whole. You can leave your comments on this post below, or go to our Contact Us page.