2016 - the year in review
Well 2016 is almost over and WHAT a year it has been for Red Community. Here are 6 stand out moments from the year:
RED ALERT
Thanks to a hugely generous £10,000 award from Gwent Police, coupled with the film-making skills of 2V Studios, we were delighted to launch the multimedia awareness raising resource, Red Alert, in March. The whole Red Alert suite is now available for free on our website. Furthermore, we have enough DVDs to make the resource available in every school and college in Wales. The films have already been used in schools and church events across Wales and we are delighted that a Schools Impact Worker, Abi, has volunteered to take Red Alert into High Schools in Cardiff.
REDEMPTION CONFERENCE
In June we hosted our inaugural annual conference in Cardiff. Redemption Conference was a wonderful event, marked by unity, worship and passion to continue standing against human trafficking and modern slavery in Wales. We were served by a wide range of contributors representing ministries such as IJM, Safe From Slavery, Cymru Against Human Trafficking, Liberty and Red Community. You can check out the conference highlights reel below. Details for Redemption 2017 will be released in due course.
CYCLING WALES FOR HUMAN TRAFFICKING
In August a small team of us travelled to Holyhead to begin a 4 day journey from north to south Wales. The purpose? To raise awareness about human trafficking and raise financial support for IJM and AIM. The awareness raising took the form of 3 evening events that we organised en route in Barmouth, Merthyr Tydfil and Cardiff. The fund-raising involved online giving and collections. Incredibly we were able to raise £5,000. We thank God for blessing us with great banter and brotherhood and for keeping us safe as we travelled. Plans are currently being discussed for another ride in 2017.
FREEDOM DAY
In October we were honoured to be invited to host a Freedom Day event at the iconic Pierhead Building in Cardiff Bay. The event proceeded by a Walk For Freedom (conjunction with A21), followed by a series of street dramas (organised by Red trustee, Ruth). The main event was a series of short presentations inside the Pierhead by representatives from Cardiff Council, Liberty, Red Community and a medical student seeking to raise awareness about trafficking amongst medical students in Cardiff. We were very grateful to AM Dai Lloyd for his help in organising Freedom Day. We hope to host similar events in the near future.
CHARITABLE STATUS AND BANK ACCOUNT
October also saw one of the most important milestones in the Red Community adventure thus far - after a great deal of effort and prayer we were finally granted charitable status by the Charity Commission. We currently have 6 trustees each of whom brings unique quality, passion and perspective to the team and we are extremely excited for what the next stage of driving this charity forwards. Our charity number is: 1169756. October was also the month that we opened a Red Community bank account.
EMBRACE
In November we were delighted to launch Embrace - a project that equips the church to support survivors of trafficking and slavery through sponsorship, befriending and hosting. You can read more about Embrace here. We are particularly grateful to the delegates at this year's Word Alive event whose generosity has enabled us to employ our Embrace project coordinator, Lauren.
That's all folks! A huge and sincere thank you to all who have supported, encouraged and prayed for the ministry of Red Community over the last 12 months. Please do continue to stand with us as we step into 2017 with the continued vision of extending gospel hope to those in chains, both locally and globally.