Social Justice

The third mark of mission of the Anglican Communion is ‘to respond to human need by loving service’, and the fourth ‘to transform unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and pursue peace and reconciliation’. Part of the Cathedral’s Mission Statement is to ‘stand with St Alban for truth and justice’.

The Social Justice Advent Calendar

At the end of last year the Social Justice Group decided to guide the Cathedral community through Advent by creating an Advent Calendar of actions, prayers and meditation – one for each day from 1 - 24 December. Such Advent Calendars have become very popular with church communities and various organisations in the last few years as a means to encourage acts of service during Advent.

The object of the 2022 St Albans Cathedral Advent Calendar was to encourage members of the Cathedral community to take up the opportunity to undertake one or more of the actions on the Calendar and also to use the prayers and meditations in their preparations during the Advent period.

The actions were all acts of service that were either suggested by local charities, organisations or individuals. They ranged from creating a heart Christmas decoration, to be distributed by St Albans’ Anna Chaplain, to visiting someone who was alone, or speaking to a rough sleeper.

The prayers and mediations were specially written for the Calendar by our clergy. We approached a number of organisations to propose actions that would be useful to them, including Centre 33, the Winter Shelters programme, St Albans Lions and the St Albans Child Contact Centre. The theme of the Advent Calendar, whether an action, prayer or meditation, was to encourage people to think of others. This included encouraging people to find a social justice issue to support and take a step towards doing just that.

The Calendar came in digital form on the Cathedral website and hard copies available in the Cathedral. The hard copies were particularly popular.

The feedback we received was generally very positive, the most common responses were, ‘what a great idea’, ‘it’s so helpful to have suggestions – I will definitely do something’, ‘it’s great to have an action instead just donating money’ and ‘thank you, it really made me think in the middle of all the pre-Christmas madness!’.

We would welcome feedback from anyone who used the Calendar last year. It would be great to hear if you found it useful, what you would like retained and what changed. Also, if you have any ideas for this year’s Advent Calendar, please let us know as we are planning to do it again!

Social Justice Group Citizens Advice

One of the charities supported through Cathedral Mission Giving is Citizens Advice. But what does it do?

Citizens Advice St Albans District gives free, confidential and impartial advice to clients throughout the St Albans and Harpenden area. Last year we helped over 10,000 people by phone, face to face and by email. We are based in St Albans Civic Centre and also have weekly ‘outreaches’ in Redbourn and Harpenden. We hope to restart outreach services to Wheathampstead and London Colney this year. Our main areas of advice are benefits, debt, housing, employment and family, but in reality there are not many subjects that we will not try to tackle!

Working for Citizens Advice is not always easy. We never know who is going to contact us and some people’s problems can seem overwhelming. Our clients are five times more likely to be on a low income than the population in general and many are on benefits. Many are sick or disabled and with poor mental and/or physical health and some struggle to speak English. We have many older clients, and some of the clients who contact us are very isolated and are finding it hard to get help from anywhere else. It does not help that our clients are far more likely than the rest of the population to find it difficult to do anything online, with some clients never having used the internet.

Most of our advice is delivered by our large team of over 40 trained volunteers, although we do have some specialist paid advisors, particularly dealing with debt and housing issues. We are always on the lookout for new volunteers with a new group starting training every January. Being a volunteer is a big commitment but also extremely rewarding and some volunteers have been with us for over 20 years.

We know that we make a huge difference to our clients’ lives, with 91% of our clients saying they would recommend us and 70% telling us we have helped them significantly. We have a huge demand for our services, with many people desperate for help to deal with the rising cost of living. We work closely with other local agencies including St Albans City & District Council, various food banks and a number of local charities. They refer people to us for help and we refer people to them.

We are grateful to all our funders since, although we are mainly funded by St Albans City & District Council, additional funding is always needed to expand the range of help we can offer.

Liz Crampton