Soul Action: Slum Survivor

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st pauls anglican church, chippenham...

Church name: St Pauls Anglican Church, Chippenham

Contact: Alison & Mal Munday

What type of Slum Survivor event was it?
We held an original Slum Survivor weekend...

When was your Slum Survivor event?
18th-19th April 2009

How many people got involved?
There were around 18 people invovled!

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Post event info...

It's two weeks since our Slum Survivor event was held, the money is still coming in, but hopefully we will have raised about £300!.

As this was the second Slum Survivor we have held, we followed the Street Children programme, which was absolutely brilliant! 

Altogether we had 18 people sleeping out in the slums from 4 different churches. We ran the event from 4pm Friday to 7pm Saturday, basing ourselves around the church hall, with the slums built on the concrete outside. 

The first challenge faced by our 4 slum families was to head down to the local retail park armed with a covering letter to get extra resources to make their slums more 'luxurious', the shop managers were great, giving pallets, plastic, polystyrene so the slums were all well lined and weather proof - in theory at least! 

They had to then build their slums, finishing at about 7pm only to be told that they had to go and earn some money if they wanted to eat.  Despite lack of technical knowledge (how do you clean toilets anyway?) and tiredness, plus rain and the dark, they all managed to earn enough to supplement their rice and lentils with a sausage each, some could even afford fruit juice instead of water! 

Their next task was to come up with an idea for how to entertain the other slum families for the evening, I haven't included the consequences stories they came up with, best forgotten as quick as possible! 

After a cold and damp night they were woken to a slice of dry bread and their next task - walk a mile up hill with an empty bucket, fill it at a designated house and then carry it back to the slums... the fullest bucket earned the most rands. 

Carrying a full bucket of water turned out to be a test of strength and team work, not to mention a great conversation opener with curious passers by!

Armed with their buckets the slummies later had to earn money by car washing, some were better than others at driving a bargain with the car drivers.  Others got really indignant at the unfair way some families were earning more than they were, all great food for thought!

The event was a real eye opener for all of us, the slum families really worked hard to earn their meals and it made them realise what life is like for those forced to live that way every day of their lives.  Drawing closer together through our shared trials, and having time for prayer and worship as well as Bible study, the event was a real blessing to our group.

We all agreed that it was a great weekend, we had fantastic support and feedback from the rest of the church and we are already thinking about the next one…

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No Slumber

There are millions of children around the world who live in homes without adults. Spend a whole night learning more about the choices these children face each day.
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GO BACK TO Your slum survivor pages...

Check out who's doing what around the country in 08 and 09 by seeing the groups who've registered to take part and organise their very own Slum Survivor events!
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Life on the streets...

Around the world 100 million children live on the streets. Spend a day or weekend facing challenges and raising awareness of the lives of these young people.
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