Social Action Programme Update - Alison Dawson

It has been exciting to start work on our Social Action Programme and even in the short time I've been working on this I can see there will be many practical ways we can show the love of Jesus to our city. Here’s a quick update on what’s been happening over the past two months.


Research. As we think about how best we can use our £1M Love York Post Pandemic Fund, I’ve begun research on our three focus areas of Poverty, Mental Health and Youth and Families, meeting up with a number of charities and churches in York as well as the council and York CVS. My aim is to build up a picture of what social action initiatives exist now, what and where the needs are, and to identify gaps and opportunities. This will help us plan strategically about where we might allocate money and resources. I’ve also met with the House of Prayer team to pray and listen to God for the work.

Governance. I’ve been setting up the governance for the Post Pandemic Fund. We now have a PCC sub committee that will act as the Social Action Programme Board, providing oversight, direction and decision making for the programme and authorisation for allocation of fund money. This Board met for the first time on 1st November and will meet regularly as the programme progresses.

Love Your Neighbour. Working together with Tony Holmes (who coordinates the Belfrey Love Your Neighbour ministry), we’ve been developing ideas for how we as a church can get more involved in helping people in our city. 


How can you get involved?

  • Pray. Please pray that we can continue to put good foundations in place for the Programme going into 2022, especially in building relationships with other churches and organisations. 

  • Help with research. I’ve lots of contacts to follow up, but always open to more, so if you have a connection to an organisation working in one of these focus areas in the city that you think it would be good for me to know about, please do get in touch! My email address is alison.dawson@belfrey.org. 

  • Love Your Neighbour - Get involved with some of the amazing projects we are partnering with, including the Besom Christmas Hampers. Read about all the projects in this week’s Belfrey Newsletter or contact tony.holmes@belfrey.org to get involved


To sum up, together we’re building a picture of what God wants to do in the city, through listening prophetically as well as practically hearing how we can partner with churches and organisations already providing valuable support to the community of York.


Isabelle Flynn