Stage Changers Project 

The idea:  To come together for Christian Aid’s 70th anniversary, both young and old, inspiring one another to be ‘Stage Changers’ of a better world.  The project took the participants (from Macaulay School, Christian Aid Supporters and local community groups) on a journey, reflecting on their own lives and the memories and stories from across 70 years of Christian Aid’s history. Our aim was to create a piece of art work that represents this journey and helps us answer the question that every “Stage Changer” needs to know!  What would we like to leave behind to make the world a better place?

 

The Cause: Stage changers: are people who are enraged by poverty and injustice, enraged that 1 in 8 people go to bed hungry every night and wanting to do something about it. We want to change the ‘unbalanced stage of life’ for both people in this generation and the next, but how?

The Journey: Participants interacted through discussion, games and creative activities. We worked together to create a 3D collage, representing Christian Aid’s life. Each week the stage was populated with scenery and props to represent the different scenes/stages of its 70 years. The creative process of the project culminated in a 70^th year commemoration for Christian Aid with an opportunity for participants to curate, show and explain to friends and family their findings through their art and a presentation.

The process: We enlisted help from a professional Visual Artist Madhumita Bose and the world’s most famous playwright, William Shakespeare with a speech from his renowned play “As you like it” Where it states that:

 “All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages.”

We explored the 7 ages that Shakespeare lists from birth to death linking in our own story and dreams and the memories of stage changers throughout the 70 years history of Christian Aid, working together to eradicate poverty and fight injustice.

Schedule: The project ran at Holy Trinity Church, Clapham Common for 7 weeks from 7^th Oct till 2 December 2015 as an after school club every Wednesday from 3:30 till 5pm.  The final week culminated in a sharing/performance to friends and family of the participants at St Anne's Hall, Clapham.. 

 

Please do take a look at what we got up to.

Stage Changers Week 1 - HOPE 

The Arrival
The children from Macaulay School Clapham rustled into Holy Trinity church at 3:30ish joining the adults sitting in a circle on the chancel.  Everyone had been given name badges as they came in so all eyes were scanning the room taking in the different names and faces.
We got off to a great start with Lucy and Abi (London’s Christian Aid Interns) presenting us with a rendition of Shakespeare’s ‘7 Ages of Man’ to introduce the idea of exploring Christian Aids 7 ages.  (The group will be filmed during the project performing this speech which will be shown at the final sharing on Dec 2nd)  As we sat in a circle it was plain to see that we were a really mixed group from 8 years to 80 bringing very different experiences and perspectives.

The Welcome
David Pollendine from Christian Aid welcomed all to the project and introduced the rest of the Stage Changer Team, Lucy, Abi, Kathy Childress,  CA Regional Coordinator and Madhumita our visual artist. The theme for this week was introduced by Megan Parker from Year 5, which she read beautifully off a paper leaf “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.” Proverbs 13:12

The Intro Game
We played a game called ‘Budge’ where someone stands and says their name, then walks to displace someone from their seat. That person must also then stand and say their own name and displace someone else from their seat. At first people stumbled over both saying their name and deciding where to walk but as we warmed up people got quicker and more importantly the room got more mixed up. David asked the group what you are called if you are forced to leave your country because of war, oppression or a natural disaster. Theo’s hand shot up and said “A Refugee”

Christian Aid’s Birth
The children heard how Christian Aid was birthed out of World War two where the UK Churches refused to celebrate VE day while Europe was on its knees and managed to raise a staggering £3.3 million for refugees in Europe over 4 days. We met Theodore a 90 year old Serbian via video archive footage who sought refuge in a refugee camp in Austria for 2 and half years funded  by Christian Aid and then Rosie Skinner from our very own group, a lay reader at Holy Trinity Church Clapham whose Father had taken in a German refugee after the war and who she recently discovered had passed away in the Guardian Newspaper.
Refugee Exercise
Kathy split us up into groups and each group was given an image of refugees in Europe. We were asked to look at the picture and see what we could see and work out who the people were. Once we had teased this out Kathy introduced us to who they were and where they had come from. One picture showed Ahmed Shaiah with his wife and two children from Syria posing in a field. Behind their smiles we discovered the parents had to leave 5 other of their siblings behind in Turkey. The exercise helped us to see that refugees were people just like us rather than being defined by a word that groups them all together. (Below Colin Howard (Sutton CA Organiser and Dorothy Key Herne Hill CA Organiser cut out shapes with Children from Macaulay School.)

The 3D Art Project
For the second half of the session Madhumita split us into 3 project groups to build the first age of Christian Aid. One group painted a tree of hope onto  4 foot by 2 foot ply board, another group cut out and decorated words that connected with the session and the final group made and decorated leaves of hope for the tree. We finished the session with some refreshments and asked the group to shout out words that connected with what they had learnt. Trust, Hope, Fear, Railway tracks, Guns were a few that were mentioned. A great start!

 

Stage Changers Week 2 - HOME

Looking back
We started today’s session by thinking back to some of the words and thoughts that we could remember from last week. We then asked everybody to write down two words connected to last week’s theme on a special Christian Aid luggage tag. This luggage tag was a good reminder of refugees and it would be used later in the art work.  We were welcoming a few new faces, Ruth Bromage a long term CA supporter from Sutton and the Rev Caroline Clarke from Holy Trinity Church. To refresh ourselves with each other’s names we played ‘budge’ again, but this time we had to say the person’s name we were going to displace. It was a bit trickier but not for Colin Howard, The CA Organiser for Sutton who was voted the best “Budger” and so had the honour of reading out from a ‘cut out house’ todays theme – “My Father’s house has many rooms; If that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?”   ‘Having a Hope for home.’
Impressively when Colin asked the Macaulay children if they knew where the verse came from, Theo’s hand from Year 6 shot up and said, “John”. He was spot on. (Below -Madhumita our Visual Artist explains to the group how to make figures for the collage.)

Meeting the past and present
We watched a DVD clip from the Christian Aid archives of Hugh Samson from Christian Aid explaining about the refugee camps in Austria after WW2.  He mentioned how the skilled workers were creamed off and taken in by countries and the rest were left behind and forgotten, something that is talked about and considered by countries today. Colin Howard then shared about friends who were conscientious objectors after WW2 and instead of national service was sent to these camps in Austria to help.  We acknowledged that having Colin in the room telling us his story connected us to these black and white pictures in a very real way. We next welcomed Sarah Miles from the Homeless Charity Ace of Clubs in Clapham.  Sarah spoke about the clubs work with displaced people on the streets and everyone listened intently. We asked Sarah questions about her work and especially about what we can do to help. Sarah shared that one practical way is to see homeless people as ordinary people just like us, and to talk to them and even get to know their names, like we were trying to do in the ‘Budge’ game, can be a real encouragement. 

Refugee Simulation
Abi and Lucy our Christian Aid Interns then lead us in an exercise based on the true account of a refugee family escaping Aleppo in Syria. We split into family groups and were told we had to leave quick and could only take 6 things with us. Cuddly toys were being mentioned by some but also things like blankets and water. In the journey a situation occurred where the van carrying us stopped and shooting could be heard all around us. What would we do? We quickly talked about it in our groups. Rudi from Year 4 heroically exclaimed that he would run out of the van as a decoy and take a bullet for his family. The adults in the group said they would stay in the van and keep quiet. We then had to make the treacherous journey across the Mediterranean Sea with 30 of us in a 10 man boat. We needed to lose 3 items. It was interesting that many of the children saw that their toys now would be of no use and could be thrown overboard.  Abi shared with us that all these events were true and documented by a journalist who travelled with the family. Thank fully this family were now safe in Germany and seeking asylum.

The 3D Art Project
For the second half of the session Madhumita split us into 3 project groups to build the second age of Christian Aid, “The School boy” One group worked on last week’s tree and added folded leaves which really brought the tree to life. Another group cut out newspaper extracts about the refugee crisis and stuck them to a new panel adding the luggage tags with associated words on. The third group created figures with stencils and cut them out to be stuck on the newspaper next week.  It has been a great two weeks and learning about the beginnings of Christian Aid and sharing and experiencing in a small way about these two refugee crisis bookending Christian Aid's 70 year history has been enlightening. Next week we move forward to explore how this initial desire to help refugees grew to a much bigger vision of tackling an even bigger problem, poverty.

Stage Changers Week 3 - POVERTY

Introduction
We started this week’s session welcoming Charlotte Joll, who is the Christian Aid Rep for Holy Trinity Church and Marie McCarthy, the Artistic Director of Omnibus Arts in Clapham. Abi our Christian Aid Intern led us in game where we threw a globe of the world to each other and then chose a country which we had a connection to.  It was very interesting to see how many of us had links to different parts of the world, France, Turkey and Italy to name a few!  David then split everyone into groups and we had to answer the question: ”If I ruled the world I would…”  There were some very interesting responses.  ‘Free toys for all’ was perhaps not a surprising one, but it was also reassuring to hear that ending poverty was on the list. 

 

Rudi poses with todays bible verse which introduced our theme of Fighting Poverty:

"The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour”  (Luke 4 18)

We agreed that Jesus was sharing a big vision here for the world and it was something we wanted to get behind. This week we were also interested in seeing how the arts have been used to tackle poverty in the world. We watched a video from CAW 1965 of a big rally in Trafalgar Square where young people used music to raise awareness and help people living in poverty around the world. You can see the video here  Perhaps this was a precursor to ‘Band Aid’ and other fundraisers where music and the arts have been utilised in this way.

 

Omnibus Arts
Marie McCarthy, the Artistic Director of Omnibus shared about how Omnibus in Clapham works to provide opportunities for local people to access art in different ways. Some children had attended a summer Grasshopper festival on Clapham Common where a big collage was made and Rudi shared how he had seen a scary but good play in their theatre.
Kathy Childress built on this talking about the work of another art's provider in Haiti called APROSIFA who after the 2010 earthquake offered art therapy to help young people process and deal with some of the trauma they had experienced. Kathy gave out paintings done by the young people and in groups we tried to understand what they were communicating. We agreed there was a theme of light and shade of colour and blandness. Kathy then shared what their actual meanings were. One painting had a person who had trees for hair. The earthquake had destroyed many trees in Haiti which had been previously saved from loggers. Now new trees were being planted so this was a painting showing both despair and hope.

 

 

The Art
Today our artwork focused on finishing off the other displays and starting a new board which showed a map of poverty using birds and cages.  Elise, Brooklyn, Rudi and Joseph did a great job with the help of Charlotte drawing the birds and cages in chalk.  The birds in the cages had sad faces and the birds outside were happy showing that poverty takes away peoples opportunities and is like being caged.

 

At the end of the session we finish with light refreshments and Dorothy and John Key, Christian Aid supporters from Dulwich shared about a big circle they created holding hands around Birmingham in 1998 with thousands of other Christian Aid supporters.  It was an important demonstration to try and get the governments to cancel the debts of poorer countries around the world. This was of course realised in 2000 and was connected to the idea of “The Year of the Lord’s Favour” where Israel cancelled all debts every 7 years, which Jesus talks about in his vision that we read at the beginning.

Next week is half term but we look forward to meeting together on wed 4th November where we will welcome  Street Pastors and will look at the theme of the  ‘struggle for peace’.

​Stage Changers Week 4 - PEACE

Struggling for Peace
Today Stage Changers met to wrestle with the idea of struggling for peace.

“He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore”. Isaiah 2:4

 

We started with a game combining our globe throwing game of last week and budge from the week before.  Everyone enjoyed making a connection to a country from around the world which included, France, Pakistan and Granada in the Caribbean.  In order to start engaging with our theme we split into groups and each group had a minute to create a group tableau of the word PEACE.  There was an interesting mix of what people saw as peace.  One group showed a conflict situation with Aaliyah stepping in to protect Elise from being hurt while another group showed gestures with Rudi showing a Vulcan hand sign and Caprice doing a victory V sign. Marion’s group showed a symbolic image of a dove of peace with Marion and Theo acting as giant wings.  The final group all showed how they relaxed in a peaceful moment. Finley lay down flat out on the ground while Colin Howard, Christian Aid Coordinator from Sutton gazed theatrically into the air.

 

 

Street Pastors
We welcomed Wayne McIntosh, the coordinator for Wandsworth Street Pastors, to share about what Street Pastors do in the local area. Wayne showed us the special walk Street Pastors do on the streets so that they are always open to welcome and greet people. Wayne also showed us how to diffuse a conflict situation by holding up the palms of our hands and speaking gently.  It was also interesting to hear that Street Pastors work in schools offering friendship and a listening ear to children. Wandsworth Street Pastors are currently running a programme in Southfields Academy where older pupils can also be trained to be 'Youth Pastors' in the school.

 

Glimpse into Life in Palestine
We watched together a video of a Christian Aid project in Palestine where children were given cameras to take pictures and show us their everyday lives.  Children shared how they didn’t have enough gas to cook their food and many of the children collected stones from rubble on the ground to sell for building material. This meant that many of the children didn’t go to school. This was followed by Ruth Bromage a long term CA supporter talking about her experience of visiting Gaza in the early nineties with Christian Aid.  Ruth  talked through a PowerPoint of slides  of projects that Christian Aid  were running to give skills to people to make money for themselves, which included education opportunities for children too.  Ruth also shared how there was always a lot of children around where ever they went and many of them would greet her and the group  with the victory V sign of peace.  We remembered that Caprice had used that sign in her group’s tableau.
We observed how peace for these children meant a lot more  because of the lack of peace around them.

 

 

Art Work & Conflict Scenarios
Today painting was the order of the day. One group painted an amazing flower of peace while the other group brought colour to our poverty map of last week and the refugee board was given a background of black by the third group.  We finished the session off with some refreshments and Caprice was chosen as the person who had made the best effort today. She had the honour of reading out our bible text from Isaiah. While we waited for parents we created a few conflict scenario tableaus and volunteers jumped into the action to rearrange the images and find  peaceful solutions. One scenario was two shoppers going for the last packet of Haribos and another was a bike theft.  The solutions ranged from calling the police to confronting the situation but in a peaceful way using the Street Pastor open palms.  Next week we will be looking at Climate Justice and hope to meet  a few ‘Gorilla Gardeners’ from Clapham.

 

Stage Changers Week 5 - JUSTICE

New Venue

This week we met in a class room at Macaulay Primary school as opposed to our normal venue of Holy Trinity Church.  It took us a bit longer to set up than normal but we had some good insight from the year 6 pupils in the group as to where to put the tables to  maximize space. Lucy our London Intern started the session off with a balloon game where we had to keep the balloon in the air.  It created a lot of excitement and sometimes everybody left the balloon for someone else and it dropped to the floor and other times everyone all went for the same balloon and it was hit out of the circle. We decided for the game to work we needed some rules. Once someone had their go at batting the balloon up in the air they had to sit down. It worked much better but it didn’t stop some from hitting the balloon too hard and out of the circle. We talked about how for the game to work well we needed to work together and help one another and that when someone decided to do their own thing the game broke down. We linked this to our theme of Climate Justice in that if everyone acts for themselves then it has a negative impact on other people. This week our bible verse was:

"But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!" Amos 5:24

Guerrilla Gardeners.

Today we had the privilege of meeting three very inspiring people whose vision is to look after their environment for the benefit of others. First of all we met via a Christian Aid Video, Marvin Ramirez from Nicaragua. He loves to plant trees and explained how even though Nicaragua was a very poor country it was very rich in natural resources. Marvin tapped into these resources planting bananas, Guavas, Coffee beans and even Chocolate trees. We then welcomed Marietta krikhaar from ‘The Friends of Clapham Common’. She explained how a group of people have a vision to protect Clapham Common from being over used. They plant trees, look out for the wildlife  and even run walks for families. One popular one is a bat watching walk at night  which obviously appealed to the children. Marion Prideaux also shared with us about her passion for planting things, which  help both animals and insects on the common to thrive. The children were really interested and all had things to say about how they enjoy using the Common in different ways.

Scales of Justice.

Kathy Childress, London Regional Coordinator for Lambeth had brought in some old scales from home and used them for an illustration to show us that the climate pain felt in many poorer countries caused by flooding, typhoons desertification to name a few, is as a result of our own habits such as,  driving cars, leaving lights on and heating our homes. All these things work together to heat up the planet causing climate change. Children offered their own opinions on this and came up with many different ways that we all abuse our earth. We talked about our responsibility to look after the planet and tell others too, so that people living in poverty don’t suffer even more.

Art Work

Madhumita our visual artist introduced us to a new art activity of creating a ‘window of Justice’, while we also worked on completing our ‘flower of peace’ and ‘Map of poverty’. Next week we will return to Holy Trinity and look at the theme of ‘How we can build for a better future.

 

​Stage Changers Week 6 - FUTURE

Building for the future - Legacy

In this week at Stage Changer’s we came to 'Pantolone' and 'old age' in Shakespeare’s speech from ‘As you like it.’  While we might begin to slow down and feel a little tired in our 60th and 70th years, Christian Aid it seems is working as hard as it ever with no imminent end in sight.  We started the session singing 'Happy Birthday' to Zara for reaching her 9th year and then reading our bible verse which introduced our theme:
“Our Father, Who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

 

Building Activity

Today we looked at ‘building for the future’ seeing that God has tasked us in this prayer  build and model his Kingdom on earth.
Abi our Christian Aid Intern split us up into 3 groups and tasked each group with building a structure using dry spaghetti and marsh mallows.  The groups were very competitive and in a short time we had a number of very ambitious building projects under way.  A very proud group containing led by London intern Lucy were voted the winners. We talked about what was needed to make a good structure.   Joseph mentioned team work and we talked about building a solid base. The team that won certainly managed this as theirs was the only structure that could stand by itself.

Brass band and Dalits
We  watched a  Christian Aid video clip of Jenny Boardman (Christian Aid’s Deputy Director from 1979 till 2000 ) talking about being cynical about a list of items which included brass band instruments  that Christian Aid was donating to help a Dalit community in India. She was expecting, water, food, and clothing to be their main needs not musical instruments! Six months later she returned and saw people from their community playing their instruments in a band. It was explained to her that these instruments gave the Dalit people and their families not only a livelihood playing at weddings and other occasions but also a status in the wider community. We remembered back to our building exercise how it is important to build with the right materials and on the right ground.

 

 

Kathy and Esther's story

Kathy Childress, our CA regional coordinator then shared a story about how her 14 year old daughter had built something very special for the future. Kathy’s daughter Esther had contracted cancer when she was 12 and unfortunately passed away at 14 years old. But in the final years of her life she rediscovered her faith and set about raising money for various projects. One project that inspired her was a Christian Aid project purchasing nets to stop people contracting malaria in Nigeria. (Interestingly CA’s Christmas Appeal this year). Kathy explained that Esther had thought about raising money for a cancer charity in the UK  but had decided that she wanted to help people who had far less access to many of the basic necessities we enjoy. She realised that just £3 could buy a malaria net and potentially save a person’s life.  Kathy explained that Esther’s passion and example was an inspiration to her which she is now able to carry and build on into the future. Kathy had no connection to Christian Aid at the time but now works full time as a regional coordinator.

 

 

Our Passions on Keys

Kathy challenged us all to think about what passions or causes we hold on to and how we might leave something behind to benefit them. This didn’t have to be something material but could be a word of wisdom or a value we wanted to pass on. We talked about it in pairs and then wrote our words on keys which we cut out using ‘key templates’.

 

 

Feedback and refreshments

As we regrouped in the Thornton Chapel for refreshments we shared around the room some of the things we had written on the keys. John Key (No pun intended) a CA supporter from Dulwich shared honestly how he would reluctantly sell his treasured plants to raise money for a cause.  Dorothy Key his wife and CA Organiser for Herne Hill wanted to pass on a simple message that we should ‘love one another’. Aaliyah from Year 5 had a passion for doing craft and shared how she is knitting a blanket which she could give to people who are cold and needed to be warm. Rudi from year 4 had a passion for his family but also liked comedy and passing on laughter to people.  There isn’t space to include what everybody said here but they will all be displayed on our legacy door which you can view on Dec 2nd.
Next week we will be finishing off all the art work and working together on our presentation of the project for the following week

 

 

Stage Changers Week 7 - REVIEW

Reviewing – Looking back to look forward

Today at Stage Changers we had the opportunity to look back over the last 7 weeks and remember the new people we have met, the new things we have learned and the new ways we have been inspired. Lucy our London Intern started us off with a game of wink murder. There was a definite split in the way people died. The adult members of the group were happy to die with a bowed head whereas the younger members enjoyed dramatically throwing themselves to the floor and writhing before eventually lying still (ish!).

Looking back
We split into teams of four to watch a new DVD from Christian Aid called “We are Christian Aid” (click on link to view). The video looked at all the things Christian Aid have been involved in over 70 years. In our groups we tried to list down as many things as possible that linked to anything we have looked at over the last 7 weeks.  There was Climate Change, Natural disasters, Refugees, Caring for our neighbour just to name a few.  Team Lucy (London Intern), Theo, Rudi and Charlotte Joll (HTC CA Rep) won the competition with 21 connections.

 

Preparing for the Exhibition
 In our groups we then focused in on a particular week/topic to refresh our minds of what we had looked at. This helped us to prepare for next week’s exhibition where we will be on hand to explain to people the art work we have created and the themes behind it.  As we talked about themes, memories resurfaced about some of the activities we had done and the new people we had met. We remembered Wayne from Street Pastors who had taught us how we could use our body language to diffuse conflict and create peace on the streets. We remembered the passionate way Marietta Krikhaar spoke about her work with the friends of Clapham Common and how Sarah Miles  from The ‘Ace of Clubs’ homeless charity challenged us to be friendly to homeless people.

 

 

Art Work

In our art work time we were concerned with finishing all the boards so that they would be ready to be displayed next week. Some of the best interactions and team work has happened during this time and watching young and old help each other to cut out shapes, glue luggage tags or paint in small corners have become some of the lasting memories and highlights of project. Next week we move to At Anne’s Hall  to talk about and exhibit our work.

 

 

Stage Changers Week 8 - EXHIBITION and SHARING

The Exhibition.

On Wednesday 2^nd December our Stage Changer Project culminated with a showing of our 3D art installation and sharing about the seven week project. As our guests entered St Anne’s Hall in Clapham the children and Christian Aid Supporters stood by the painted exhibits and explained what lay behind the brushstrokes. Themes of Hope, Home, Poverty, Peace, Justice and Future were discussed with  Parents, friends and family as they milled around the exhibition looking at the paintings, chatting and enjoying some nibbles, tea and coffee. After half an hour everyone sat down to hear about the project

 Stage Changers Project

I explained that this project has been an initiative of the Legacy team at Christian Aid. In fact when I had my interview to become a legacy officer at Christian Aid a year and a half ago I pitched this ‘Intergenerational Art Project’ as something I would do.

I explained it was a new way of doing Legacy work.  Rather than talking about it we experienced it through the eyes of Christian Aid supporters, Christian Aid Partners across the world (via videos), local community groups, (the  Ace of Clubs, Omnibus arts, Street Pastors and the Friends of Clapham Common) and perhaps most exciting through the eyes of the Macaulay school children. 

Legacy work is usually confined to talking about gifts in a will, or in memory of someone helping the next generation. Obviously this is an incredibly valuable thing for many recipients living in poverty across the world. However the questions we asked was: ‘What is it we want to leave behind that will make a difference for the next generation?’

This question included giving in a financial way but also challenged us to think further about our lives as a legacy gift

The moments and events that have inspired us older ones to give and pass on a ‘legacy lived’ have sparked some of our young Stage Changers. Zara from Year 4 was inspired to create a poster for lost puppies, Aaliyah from year 5 felt challenged to offer a blanket she was knitting to refugees in Calais and Elise from Year 4 insisted her Parents give a regular donation to stop the spread of malaria in Nigeria. Sparks that can lead into passions that can change the world!

 

Shakespeare

Shakespeare was our inspiration with his speech ‘The seven ages of man.’ from his play ‘As you like it’, We used this to represent the seven decades of Cristian Aid. We have been inspired by CA’s 70 year history.  We have played games, talked about some deep issues and spent time painting, gluing and cutting shapes out together.  I never forgot Colin Howard, Christian Aid Organiser for Sutton crying out. “In all my life I have never made a paper Key and cut it out!” Colin you have arrived!!

We showed everyone a short video that we shot during the project of the Macaulay children, Christian Aid Supporters, Christian Aid Staff and Parents reciting the full speech of ‘the entire World’s a Stage.’ It was a kind of ‘Perfect Day’ equivalent but using Shakespeare verse instead of a song.

 

Kathy Childress inspired by Esther

Kathy Childress, Christian Aid Regional Coordinator shared about how her daughter Esther inspired her to be where she is today. Esther was diagnosed with Cancer at 12 years old and despite all the restrictions that that illness brought her, she focused her energies on helping other people who were worse off.  This included a legacy gift to Christian Aid that equated to over 900 nets to help stop the spread of malaria in Nigeria. When Kathy first saw a poster about this with Esther on a train little did she know that a few years later she would be working for Christian aid and asking people to support a Christmas Appeal to eradicate malaria in Nigeria! Kathy has been inspired by her daughters Legacy and that goes on living today. We gave everyone an opportunity to give to our Christmas Appeal this year especially in the light of Kathy’s story. If you would still like to give an donation then just click on this link.

And to see Esther’s in Memory page click here

 

Be a Stage Changer and Change the world.

We finished the presentation with a short video of our Stage Changer participants sharing how they wanted to change the world and we encouraged everyone who came along to think about how they too can be a ‘Stage Changer’.  People stayed around afterwards to chat and we served mulled wine and mince pies.

We hope to be able to display the exhibition in in the Forum at Christian Aid from Dec 7 - 11 and in Macaulay Primary school from Dec 14 - 17 So please do keep a look out for that!