Category: Parishioner

Posted on

Fun and fundraising for Macmillan 

Huge thanks to everyone who joined in with our ‘special edition’ of Friday Community Cafe this week at St Mary’s, a fundraising coffee morning for Macmillan. We had some amazing cakes, raffle prizes and donations, you are all amazing! ! 

We have raised £380 and counting! This is 5 times what we raised last year, a massive thank you to everyone. You can click on the link to see the latest total on our fundraising page. We have smashed our target, thank you all so much! This all makes a difference and helps Macmillan to keep on supporting those who need it. 

Congratulations to all the raffle winners and thank you to our lovely local Co-op for donating the top prize, the hamper of delicious co-op goodies! Guess the weight of the cake was tricky! The correct answer was 837g (1lb 14oz) well done Andy who guessed the nearest! 

We loved seeing you all for a cuppa and a catch-up, and the home made cakes were absolutely delicious! Remember we are here every Friday 10:00-13:00 for cuppa, chat and toasties at 12. Come again soon! 

https://coffeefundraising.macmillan.org.uk/fundraising/cm23005703

#MacmillanCoffeeMorning #StMarysAshVale #CommunityCafe #FridayCafe #CoOpAshVale #CoOpAsh #itswhatwedo #Community #Macmillan #ABigThankYou 

Posted on

21st October Celebration of Youth

You are invited! 

The Children’s Society has been around for 142 years, and we would like you to come and join us to celebrate this wonderful charity by taking you through its journey through the decades, through drama, music and dance, on 21st October 2023.

There will be drinks on arrival at 6:30pm followed by performances at 6:45pm from some talented children and young people, including a Youth Jazz Trio. There will be a family disco, raffle and a disco later on in the evening for the adults as well. Food will be provided but please Bring your Own Bottle.

The Family Disco will be straight after the performances in the hall for those who need to take their younger children home earlier in the evening (please could parents stay with their children throughout the evening).

So dig out your dancing shoes, listen to the mellow sounds of the Golden Age Jazz Trio, boogie away in the disco, and hear about The Children’s Society as well. The proceeds of the evening will go to The Children’s Society, a charity which supports and campaigns for vulnerable children and young people across the United Kingdom.

Tickets (includes food) 

£12 Adult 

£5 Child (5-17)

Book your tickets today by contacting Karen via the parish office 

parishoffice@ash-vale.org.uk


Posted on

Food Parcels Harvest Appeal 2023

Harvest is coming up and as always the church celebrates and gives thanks for all our blessings! We also collect for those in need, bringing donations to our Harvest Festival Service on the 8th October. If you would like to join in you can join us at 10:30am on the day, or donate any time beforehand. 

Here is the list of the weekly items that our local Ash Villages Food Parcels team use for a standard food parcel, to give you an idea of what you might donate: 

The tins we get through 30+ a week of each: 

Tomatoes / Sweetcorn / Baked beans / Tuna

Meat (curry or hotdogs or ham or mince or corned beef etc)

Sweet (tinned fruit / rice pudding / custard etc)

Other staples we include every week are: 

Pasta (instant noodles are a great ‘low cost to cook’ option) 

Rice (microwave rice is low cost to heat)

Pasta sauce (again low cost to heat)

Tea / coffee / sugar 

UHT milk & Cereal

Treats occasionally to bring a smile e.g. Biscuits / Jam / crisps / sweets 

We also try to include fresh items to support healthier eating: 

Potatoes / Onions / Carrots / Apples / Eggs

Any of the above that you might like to donate would be much appreciated thank you. You could pick one item and donate a few of the same, or pick a couple of things from the list, or even pick one of each and donate the necessary for a whole weekly parcel. 

Alternatively you could choose to support us with toiletries and “Baby bank” items:

Shower gel / Shampoo / Sanitary items / Soap

Nappies / baby wipes / Baby formula / Baby food pouches

Laundry pods (we divide packs between families)

Supporting those with much loved Pets: We also like to be able to give out cat food and dog food if people are able to donate those, so that families can afford to keep much loved pets. 

Where to send things:

Donations for the Harvest Festival service collection can be dropped off at St Mary’s Church on Vale Rd, GU12 5JE whenever we are open. (E.G Sunday church services are 10:30am-12:00 / Toddlers on Tuesdays 10:00-11:30 / Cafe on Fridays 10:00-13:00) 

Throughout the year you can also take donations directly to the team at the Chapel on Wharf Rd GU12 5AY, where we pack the parcels. The team is there packing parcels on Wednesdays and Fridays 8:45-9:30am or contact us to make other arrangements if these times don’t work for you. You can also choose to leave items in the community shed in the Chapel car park. Please clearly label the bag “Donation for the food parcels”. 

Do you take donations of funds too? Yes please! 

If shopping is inconvenient we do also very gladly accept donations of funds. We can buy in bulk which keeps the cost down and makes your money go even further to feed more families.

You can donate by cash or cheque at St Mary’s church Ash Vale, which our Treasurer allocates to the restricted fund for food parcels – just write on the envelope or on the back of the cheque what the donation is for and he ensures it goes in the right account.

We can send you the details for a bank transfer or regular standing order if you prefer.  This just requires you to put “Food Parcels” as the reference so again we can assign the funds to the right project.

For immediate online donations we have a church account with the “Give a little” donations platform and the link for the Food Parcels project is here: https://givealittle.co/campaigns/7a47190c-ad4e-4cf9-8662-da844101a41c  this platform allows you to sign up for monthly regular giving, or a one-off donation, whichever you would like to do.

Whatever you decide to do – thank you very much for your support!

If you’d like to know more please contact: 07730609446

Posted on

Egg boxes!

Would you like to be more eco-friendly and help out the local Ash Villages Food Parcels Project at the same time? We urgently need your egg boxes please – the small ones that hold 6 eggs – for us to use with the food parcels. We buy our eggs in bulk to keep the cost down, as funding is VERY tight, but we can only do it if we have enough egg boxes to put them in. So please donate your SMALL egg boxes to us and we will use them again! You can drop them off in the community shed in the chapel car park any time 24/7 and we will be very grateful! Thank you!!

with much love to all our neighbours from the Ash Villages Food Parcels Team

Posted on

Welcome to the Autumn Term

Good Morning! Our regular groups are open again this week for the winter term. We look forward to welcoming you to St Mary’s and to The Chapel.

Mondays – Chapel Cafe 9:00-12:00 (Chapel)

Tuesdays – Little Lambs (babies and toddlers) at st Mary’s 10:00-11:30

Wednesdays – Chapel Kids (babies and toddlers) 11:00-14:00 (bring a packed lunch or we offer baked beans on toast)

Fridays – St Mary’s Community Cafe 10:00-13:00 (toasties at 12:00)

Chapel: Wharf road GU12 5AY
St Mary’s: Vale Road GU12 5JE

Posted on

90+ year olds with MP3s continued……

As a recap, back in May 2023 Catto Homecare provided five lucky clients with free MP3 players. We were all aware of the powerful footage of the famous ballerina when she listened to Swan Lake https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=959726784551737. However, we do not wish to digress.

Our most successful experience was provided by our highly energetic staff member who has an extraordinarily high level of enthusiasm with anything she undertakes. The initial MP3 player was gifted to one of our clients who we are going to call Maria (for the purposes of this blog) and it took a while to persuade her that it was a genuinely free item that she could listen to. Maria belongs to the age group where her belief is ‘nothing comes for free’. Maria is in her late 90’s, partially sighted and lives on her own with Alzheimer’s. Our care staff were given instructions starting with helping the client to put the old fashioned headphones on (similar to a hair band). Although we are not allowed to share the photo of Maria smiling on her chair listening to jazz in a world of her own, we can only describe her beaming smile when she wears her headphones and enthusiastic head nods to the music as heart-warming. Our initial blog covered the fact that her music choice was ‘any jazz is good jazz’. Maria simply accepted that this tiny bright pink device could magically play music loud enough for her to hear. Maria has recently had her chair increased in height to enable her to get on and off more easily and she sat with her headphones on and music at full volume sweetly shouting out with a big smile ‘I feel like a queen now’. All the staff feel quite guilty when we remove the headphones from our clients. We ensure they go into their lockable boxes and are turned off until the next special music therapy session.

The moral of the story is that we continue to receive just as much pleasure from the reaction of our clients during the music therapy sessions.

We are currently hiring staff so please feel free to get in touch for a cup of tea or coffee in our igloo for a chat about the roles we have.

If the readers are managers of a care home or domiciliary company like us, you can obtain five MP3 players from Norman McNamara from Purple Angel Dementia Awareness Devon, Charity Number 1189616,  National  Westminster bank Torquay Sort code 55 70 01, Account number 74884662. Catto Homecare provided a donation. 

Written by Wendy from the domiciliary and live in care provider Catto Homecare in Mytchettwww.cattohomecare.co.uk