Resources
We work together with local churches in south Cambridgeshire to support The Children's Society.
Here you can read about the campaigns we have run in church and in our local community to support the work of The Children's Society. Where applicable we've also added templates for you to download and adapt for your own church.
If you'd like to discuss any of these ideas and how you can use them in your church, please contact Rob Needle.
If you need help with any of the templates please contact Nicky West.
Our popular Advent Challenge is back for 2023! Select the pdf you want to download and print. There is also an editable version (powerpoint file) that you can adapt for your church.
Share joy this Advent, with a kind and thoughtful deed every day for 24 days. Don't forget to raise money at the same time for The Children’s Society, by asking friends and family to sponsor you or make a donation.
This year, our Lent appeal raised funds for the Children’s Society’s campaign to provide Guardians for all unaccompanied child refugees.
We asked people to simply ‘buy’ a paper ‘Guardian Angel’, for either £1 or £5 each, which were then displayed on the Church’s noticeboard throughout Lent.
It's a really simple idea, but effective - in fact this was our biggest fundraiser ever for The Children's Society, raising more than £535 over Lent!
If you would like to do something similar, use the angel template provided below (2 per A4 sheet, although if you want them bigger you can photocopy onto A3 paper). After you've printed them out, cut round the angel shapes and make incisions on the two straight lines. Then fold the wings round so they slide into the slots you've just cut. You will then end up with a 'conical' angel shape which you can stick to your noticeboard, or add string/ribbon to the angel if you want to suspend it.
-
Download the angel template
-
This template is adapted with permission from tratuha.com, a paper crafts website for children.
-
Poster (A5)
-
Poster (A4, with explanation of what the AFT project is)
Find out here how much you helped us to raise through the Buy Bricks campaign.
To promote our fund-raising campaign this Lent we created an A4 poster for display around St Andrew's. If you'd like to do something similar, either at Lent or anytime, download this powerpoint template, which will allow you to edit and insert your own church logo.
In Summer 2019 Stapleford held its annual Village Weekend, with the recreation ground hosting stalls, local crafts and family activities. St Andrew's used one of its stalls to run a game to raise awareness of the plight of refugee children fleeing conflict in Syria - and to promote the work of The Children's Society in helping them.
In the giant board game we produced, participants rolled dice to move their pieces along two commonly-used routes used by refugees escaping conflict to reach the UK.
Accompanying flash cards highlighted the dangers and hardships facing refugees making the journey. See photos, left, for an example of one of the fact cards.
The game has since been used by churches in south Cambridgeshire.
The board was produced on foamboard, making it more durable than heavy-duty card, and measured 1.2m x 0.8m. If you'd like to find out more about this or produce a similar board game for your church, please contact either
Rob Needle or
Nicky West.
For Lent 2019 St Andrew's joined The Children's Society '
Strengthening the Safety Net' campaign, raising more than £245 over 40 days.
We asked church-goers to 'buy' paper links for £1, and week by week displayed the purchased links in church.
Our Lent idea was a simple, very low-cost campaign which doesn't need anything beyond paper, scissors and tape or glue - and of course some willing volunteers to put them all together!
The photo shows some of the paper links which were displayed below the organ in St Andrew's for Lent.
This was in support of the Community Hidden Harm Awareness Team (CHAT) project in Essex, helping children affected by parental substance use.
We asked our congregation members to select items to 'purchase' in our 'shop window' which was on display in the church porch. The items included school or PE uniform, holiday lunches and toiletries. Once 'purchased', the items were added to cards decorating our Christmas tree, so we could see at a glance how much we had funded. In total church members raised £160.
