Introducing the new Renewed Hope staff team!

Staff team (left to right): Andrew Tyers, Anna Coe, Samuel John and Yvonne Dover

We’ve had a busy few months at Renewed Hope, not only continuing to run a busy Drop-In through varying forms of Government Covid-19 restrictions. We’ve also been recruiting for two staff positions a new Fundraising Co-ordinator and a new role, the Support Time and Recovery Worker.

We’re pleased to announce those vacancies have now been filled.

Samuel John joined us in May as our new STR Worker working full time. His contribution has been felt immediately as it’s meant guests’ needs have been able to be addressed in the moment. He has also been able to make more referrals to partner organisations and then able to have the time to follow up on their progress. We want to preserve Renewed Hope’s function as a signposting agency whilst maximising the support we give the guests. Samuel is doing just that.

Andrew Tyers started with us this month as our new Fundraising Co-ordinator. He brings with him lots of experience in fundraising and also in working with other homelessness charities. Please get in touch with him with your fundraising ideas and any questions about making donations or raising awareness of Renewed Hope in other ways. Email him on fundraising@renewedhope.org.uk

They join our Project Co-ordinator Anna Coe and Senior Administrator Yvonne Dover on the staff team.

Thank you for your support.

Drop-In service continuing in January lockdown

Following the Government’s announcement about the new lockdown on January 4 2021, the Renewed Hope trustees have looked at the guidance and reviewed our practices in Drop-In. In line with the guidance we are keeping Drop-In open and continuing to allow guests into the Chapel. This will include weekends as we’ve found when we serve take-aways from the door, they tend to congregate outside less than 2m from each other thereby increasing the risk of transmission. Inside they are always sat at a safe distance.

The hours are weekdays 11am to 3pm and weekends 12-1.30pm all covered by one volunteer shift.

The guests were really glad of this news as many see Drop-In as a life line, however your safety and their safety is paramount to us and we want to ensure we’re doing everything we can to prevent anyone catching the virus here. We’re asking any volunteers feel unsafe at any point, or do not want to help in Drop-In at for the time being, to let us know. You can always ask to come back on shift when things settled down. Likewise any volunteers who are asked to shield or have other risk considerations such as elderly relatives they need to care for, we’d ask to not help out at the moment.

Our volunteer bubbles – groups for each day of the week are more important than ever, so we are monitoring that even more closely.

It goes without saying, any guests, volunteers, donors or agency workers, are asked not to come to the chapel if you have any of the symptoms – loss or change in taste or smell, continuous cough or high temperature. If you’re regularly involved with the charity’s work, please let us know and book a test. Please inform us of the result by email.

If you have any questions or concerns then do get in touch at info@renewedhope.org.uk or 01737 886997. In the meantime we hope you stay well

A massive thank you from Renewed Hope

To all our supporters,

Well 2020 will definitely be a year we all remember! Thank you all for your continued support of Renewed Hope as we have had to constantly review our services to respond to the changing need presented to us by our clients.

At the start of the year, the Winter Night Shelter was running, we’d just moved to our new home at Shrewsbury Chapel and were looking forward to using the larger space to help our clients in new ways. We also held several business dinners raising thousands of pounds for the charity. But it was all brought to an abrupt halt by Covid-19. Drop-In was forced to become a sandwich take-away service and Renewed Hope stepped in to support the council’s emergency response delivering food to people in need.

During those first difficult months of the pandemic you supported us with food donations and giving your time sorting and delivering food parcels and serving food at the Drop-In take-away. Then in August when lockdown was eased and we opened Drop-In, you filled shifts to enable us to welcome our Drop-Inners back into the chapel.

As you know the rules have changed continually and thank you for sticking with us as we’ve adapted to help our clients within the guidance.

Hopefully as we go through 2021 everything will return to normal and night shelter will be back on the horizon, but in the meantime we’ll carry on supporting homeless and vulnerable people through the Drop-In and working with our partners.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all. We hope you and your loved ones stay safe and well.

Best wishes,

The staff and trustees of Renewed Hope