Lenten Appeal, Church of Our Lady and St Edmund, Abingdon

We are fundraising during Lent for two registered charities: Marriage Care (UK Registered Charity: 218159) and BEFSA (Borien Educational Foundation for Southern Africa (UK Registered Charity No. 1106964)

MARRIAGE CARE specialise in marriage preparation, relationship counselling and relationship knowledge. They also provide crisis support and helplines. Their mission is to share relationship skills and knowledge, and support couples and individuals in the best and worst of times in their relationships, regardless of their ability to pay. Their vision dares to hope for a society in which everyone can form and sustain healthy marriages and relationships.

Since 1946 they have grown into the largest faith-based relationship support charity in the UK operating with a small staff team of 11 FTEs, currently training and supporting over 400 hundred skilled volunteers who deliver marriage preparation and relationship counselling to thousands of couples every year. The spectrum of their provision is unique as is their commitment to low-cost accessible services where no one is turned away because they can’t afford to pay. 28% of their clients are in poverty or on low incomes and the need is great.

The scale of family breakdown has increased five times over in the last fifty years with 43% of 16/17-year-olds not living with both natural parents compared to 9% in the mid-1970s. Yet their vision dares to hope for a society in which everyone can have the same opportunity to form and sustain healthy, dependable marriages and relationships - making a real difference to children’s life chances, to adult wellbeing and the emotional and economic health of society. As they approach their 80th year, they want to celebrate their legacy and galvanise new support for the future.

BEFSA (Borien Educational Foundation for Southern Africa) is an educational charity trust, non-profit organisation (NPO) and public benefit organisation (PBO) working to reduce poverty in South Africa through a diverse set of interventions. The work started in 2004, with the specific aim of reducing poverty in South Africa. The beneficiaries of BEFSA’s work are the schools and communities located in the rural areas of the Eastern Cape in South Africa. This work has its roots in Oxfordshire County Council’s South Africa Working Group which began their work in 1995 following the democratic changes in the country in 1994. The activities that BEFSA runs in the rural areas of South Africa are advanced because of the acute disparities in income and wealth inherited from the apartheid era which are still painfully evident, and enormous differences still exist between schools in the rural and township areas compared to those in the former white areas. Poverty and hunger is widespread and HIV/AIDS and TB are continuing to extract a heavy social and economic toll.

Their work includes the professional development of school principals and educators; the supply of teaching and learning resources (including large amounts of school furniture and equipment); providing improved teaching and learning environments and improved sanitation facilities for staff and children in schools in South Africa; a micro enterprise programme for women assisting them to start new businesses; running community feeding programmes with 4 feeding stations serving 2000 meals a week; and providing support for children with special educational needs and disabilities either in their local schools or in day care centres.

Please give generously. Thank you.