St Mark’s and Peartree Messy Church in Woolston Southampton have in the past applied for small grants from Tesco, and have been fortunate to receive small pockets of money. In order to fund a ‘Peartree Summer of Fun’, to offer families some summer holiday activity sessions, this year they applied for a larger grant, and were surprised to be put forward for a ‘Golden Grant Award’, which resulted in Tesco awarding them £5,000!
St Mark’s and Peartree Messy Church offers families a regular ‘Friday Family Fun’, where families have a safe friendly space to play board games, be creative with craft, chat and make local friends over supper. The idea was to build on this – the church hoped to offer even more activities and reach a wider range of people.
The grant turned Peartree’s Summer of Fun into a year of outreach opportunities, offering everything from pottery painting to yoga, dance workshops, multi-sports, cookery and a new initiative called ‘Build It Breakfast’, which includes jumbo bags of recycled Lego.
So alongside Friday Family Fun and Messy Church, the church added Saturday breakfasts to their outreach, which throughout August were held weekly.
Over the course of the year, 67 families and over 125 children benefited from the Peartree Summer of Fun! Everyone enjoyed lots of food, whether through the weekly breakfasts (the favourite was pancakes) or by helping themselves at the ‘Rainbow Snack Bars’, food stations full of healthy choices from melon to houmous. To stretch those holiday budgets foodie bags went home as well!
