Love Christmas partners with the Coptic Orthodox Church and Exodus Youth Worx

Tara Hanna, Director of Exodus Youth Worx reflects on the power of partnership during Love Christmas 2021 and the impact of connecting with local communities. 

Exodus Youth Worx UK decided to partner with Love Christmas 2021 having seen the huge rewards for those we worked with last Christmas; both the recipients of our gifts and our volunteers. Love Christmas 2021 has been an even bigger success and with more people asking to get involved we have already started thinking about Love Christmas 2022. 

There were two partnerships that were powerful this year. The first was working with the Coptic Orthodox Diocese of London. We met with Archbishop Anba Angaelos, the parish priests, and the Joint Youth Committee to show them our proposal and ways in which they could get involved at a parish level in their local communities. One parish concentrated on the homeless; providing 140 care boxes - 80 of which were given to shelters to distribute and 60 of which were hand delivered to those on the streets of Brighton, through their Compassion outreach.  

Another parish, St George Cathedral in Stevenage, made up 174 Bags of Kindness on Christmas Eve; 60 of which were collected by a local Councillor in his pick-up truck to distribute and the rest were hand delivered by our young people to homes in the streets surrounding our church.  It's so important to see our young people serving in this way, giving up their Christmas Eve to go out and be part of Love Christmas and for them to be so filled with joy was a sight to behold.  

The second was our partnership with schools who are always so generous. One school that we are now on our second year working with are St Anne's Catholic High School for Girls in Enfield. Most of the hampers made are delivered to families whose daughters attend the school that we help throughout the year as part of our Food Support Programme and some were donated to families of the Pupil Referral Unit.   

Another school we have worked with this year is St Andrews Primary in Southgate whose students prepared ‘Boxes of Kindness’ which were donated to the Enfield Women's Centre and the Pupil Referral Unit for distribution. The partnership with schools is important to us as they are the true foundation of our communities already doing so much with families and our young people and able to engage the entire learning family from student to headteachers in the journey. 

The impact on my team has been huge and in fact it has gone far beyond our small team here. In 2020 we donated 500 hampers and bags, in 2021 we donated 861 Bags of Kindness, family hampers and homeless care packages and we cannot wait to see what God has in store for us in 2022.  

A friend’s 6 year old daughter, Lilly, heard what we were doing and went out and sang Christmas songs with her friends and played her violin all over West London and together they raised £400 for our Love Christmas campaign. 

You can find out more about the work of Exodus Youth Worx on their Facebook page