Exciting News from North Wales

We (Dai and Dave) have just returned from a fantastic few days in North Wales and wanted to share a quick update from the trip.

The purpose of the trip was 2-fold:

Firstly, we were invited by Kinmel Bay Church to run an On the road event in order to raise awareness about slavery and trafficking in North Wales and to share about the work of Red Community.

Secondly, we arranged to combine the trip with some meetings to connect with key people who are working on the frontline with survivors in North Wales and to explore ways that Red could partner with them, not least in expanding our Embrace project into the North. The desire to broaden the horizons of Embrace arose after Red was recently gifted a significant sum of money specifically to see the Embrace project rolled out in North Wales.

Anyway, suffice to say both aspects of the trip were a resounding success.

Firstly, we had a great time with brothers and sisters at Kinmel Bay Church on Thursday evening. Using Psalm 10 as a platform we introduced the subject of slavery and zoomed in on some areas of exploitation that are particularly rife in North Wales – most notably county lines and forced labour. We then explained how God’s people should respond – through crying out in prayer for God to ‘arise’, and being willing to be His hands and feet to do the work of justice in our broken world. We then prayed together. It was a great event and timely connections were made in light of the other aspect of our trip.

We had 2 meetings with key representatives of BAWSO – the charity that is responsible for caring for survivors of slavery across Wales. We already enjoy a great relationship with BAWSO in South Wales, but as yet we have not been able to take steps in serving the North of the country. But that is about to change! To cut a long story short everything is in place for us to roll out the Embrace project in North Wales. From as early as next week support workers in North Wales will be able to apply to the Embrace ‘sponsorship pot’ for small grants on behalf of the survivors they are caring for. These fast-access grants will enable them to provide for the various urgent needs their clients may be facing. Furthermore, there is also a real openness to start matching survivors with befrienders and we will be discussing this with support workers in the coming weeks.

So all in all it was an encouraging and timely trip (crowned by a stunning steak in Mold on Friday!) Beautifully, there was a rainbow in the sky when we arrived on Thursday and it seemed to follow us everywhere we travelled on Friday (see photo).

Please join us in praying for this exciting new chapter for Red Community.

We will keep you updated as things progress.