Category: Street Angels

Belper’s Street Angels project is featured in a new book about how Street Angels have been making a difference up and down the country.

The e-book is written by Paul Blakey MBE who started up Street Angels and who came to Belper to help launch our own project in June 2012.

It is available for download on Amazon Kindle and can also be downloaded to any device as a PDF.

A minimum donation of £5 is suggested for the book, proceeds of which are going towards Street Angels projects nationwide.  You can donate here.

The project was originally launched by Hope for Belper last year and celebrated its first anniversary in June. 

Find out more about the project and how to volunteer here.

The Street Angels are approaching their annual commissioning and first birthday party, which will happen on June 7th, 6:45 for 7pm. Our birthday party and annual commissioning will be held at St John’s chapel, you are very welcome. We will be thanking all those who have made the project possible and celebrating our journey so far as a project. 

On the 24th May we met our new Belper Street Angel recruits for training and a social, so that questions could be asked and experience gained.  

We continue to cover the estates and the town alternately so that Angels can choose for their once-monthly round either the 7pm-11pm estates round, or the 10pm until 2am town round. 

As we recruit more and more people, the goal we have set ourselves, to have enough people eventually to cover both areas simultaneously on an evening, might soon come true. You can make this happen! Please do get involved. For information and an application form contact Belperstreetangels@gmail.com

Rachel Marszalek (Belper Street Angels Co-ordinator)

Belper Street Angels has received a fresh funding boost from the town’s Rotary Club following last year’s annual carol concert by the Dalesmen’s Male Voice Choir.

The project, which is supported by Hope for Belper, received a cheque for £600 after being nominated as one of a series of local charities to benefit from the proceeds of the concert, organised each year by the rotarians.

It came about after Street Angels co-ordinator Rachel Marszalek and secretary Julie Degg gave a talk to the Methodist Church Ladies Group last year.

One of the ladies present told her rotarian husband about the project which he then nominated to receive a share of the cash.  Here’s how it was covered ni the Belper News.

Belper Street Angels has carried out its first trial of a new 11pm -3am lateshift and is seeking new recruits to help make it a permanent feature.

The project, launched eight months ago, has seen teams of volunteers patrolling the town centre and estates between 8-12 each Friday evening.

In the longer-term, the plan is to launch two regular weekly shifts, an early evening shift focused on the estates and a late night shift focused on the town centre.

For the next few months, however, the project team plan to alternate between the two until enough new volunteers are recruited.

Said project co-ordinator Rachel Marszalek:  “It’s continuing to be a chilly winter but the Angels are unperturbed and we are asking if you can help us in our attempts to attract new recruits to the project before a commissioning of the next wave of angels begins in June.”

Anyone wanting to volunteer should contact Rachel at Revrachelemma@gmail.com. Some updated information about the project can be found on the Street Angels page.

Belper Street Angels is officially up and running following a successful launch event at St John’s Chapel, Belper, last Friday.

Paul Blakey, the national founder of Street Angels, led a short commissioning service for the 19 volunteers who have so far joined the project and asked for God’s blessing on their work.

Hope for Belper co-ordinator Gareth Greenwood spoke about how the Street Angels project had evolved from Hope’s actitvities over the past four and a half years while project co-ordinator Rachel Marszalek gave a reading from Matthew 25, 35-40.

The service, which was attended by church leaders from across the town as well as Hope representatives and Street Angels volunteers, was followed by Buck’s Fizz (the drink, not the band!) and nibbles.

Afterwards, Paul joined the by-now-regular Friday night ‘patrol’ along with members of the Belper team. They are pictured outside the Memorial Gardens, Paul on the right.

Street Angels are still on the lookout for potential volunteers willing to give up one Friday night a month. If you care about young people and would like help make Belper a safer community for all please contact BelperStreetAngelsVolunteers@rocketmail.com