Community Development Report

I want to first start by giving thanks and praise to our Lord Jesus Christ who is the centre of all that we do here at Hope church Hounslow and the one who sustains us to keep sharing the Love of God and enabling the pouring out of the Holy Spirit on our community.

As you may have seen, I started as the Community Development Lead at the beginning of October last year. Since then, I have been blessed to see the generosity of the community of Hounslow and join alongside our wonderful team of volunteers to pray and serve with them in our food bank and community supermarket sessions.

We have had the privilege of seeing how God is moving in our local community. We have seen atheists interested in stories of Jesus and asylum seekers attending Alpha courses wanting to learn more about the Christian faith.

Although I was not here for the whole of 2025, some of our wonderful volunteers have put together a data pack which I am able to share with you. Across all of our Wednesday and Thursday food bank sessions, we fed 5566 and welcomed 2135 guest and across all of our Monday Community Supermarket sessions we fed 2203 and welcomed 709 guests. These numbers for our foodbank sessions are slightly lower than our 2024 statistics, whereas our community supermarket figures are higher, highlighting our focus on transitioning people from temporary emergency support to our longer-term food provision which encourages guests to budget as we support them in becoming independent.

We continue to have the amazing Crosslight team attending our sessions fortnightly. They have been able to offer our guests guidance and support for a wide range of problems, including: debt, benefits and housing issues.

I am continuing to work with external agencies who are able to come into our sessions and support our guests and I hope that in this coming year, these relationships will strengthen and we can expand the support we are able to give to the families and individuals who come through our doors.

In January I had the privilege of joining some of the team on a trip up to Nottingham to attend the HTB Summit leadership conference which was a great opportunity to meet lots of others who are doing a similar role to myself. I was able to attend learning sessions specifically tailored for Social Transformation work and I came away with lots of new ideas and things to reflect on. Off of the back of this, I have just signed onto the HTB Accelerate course which is a 6 week programme aiming to equip and empower leaders to sustain and grow the work they are part of in their church communities.

Something else I feel God is calling me to focus on in this new year, is how we share our faith with those who come to our sessions who may not know Jesus yet. I have applied for some grants and we are hoping to launch a food bank library in the coming months where we will give people access to Bibles and other Christian literature in the hopes this gives people the chance to encounter Jesus in their own time without the pressure of a face to face conversation, which although is an amazing opportunity for some, isn’t always the right first step for everyone. I also hope to make time to encourage and equip our amazing volunteer team so that they are able to pray with guests and boldly share their faith.

Please continue praying for the work we are doing and for our amazing volunteer teams who show up week after week to share the unfathomable Love of Jesus with our local community. All praise be to Jesus for he is good!!

Amelia

Community Development Lead