The Society of St. James, based in Southampton, are having a One Bag Drop event on Saturday 2nd April 2016 between 10 am and 6 pm.
The idea behind One Bag Drop is to allow one person to make a difference to another.
What the Society would like are donations of specific items such as food and toiletries.
These will then be delivered to people who are moving in to one of the Society’s hostels, or who are coming off the streets, or who, after successful support from the Society, are ready to move on to independent accommodation. (The latter is the ultimate goal of the Society for those they help).
The donated items are to be taken to Above Bar Church, Community Room, Southampton. The slogan for the event is One Day, One Bag, One Person.
There’s a list of ten essentials for our #OneBagDrop on 2nd April Can you help us make a difference? #HampshireHour pic.twitter.com/kIpSsnfaJl
— Society of St James (@SSJCharity) March 22, 2016
There is a suggested shopping list of wanted items on the Society’s website but the list is not exhaustive. Some suggested items are:-
- Soap
- Deodorant
- Toothpaste
- Toothbrush
- Baby Wipes
- Shampoo
- Hat
- Socks
- Tissues
- Canned Food/Soup
The great thing with this list is the items are easily obtainable and can be found reasonably priced at discount stores and so on. A well known store in Eastleigh, for example, sells a packet of 5 toothbrushes for £1. So the great thing is there is scope for people from all backgrounds to support the Society.
Last year the One Bag Drop event helped the Society to provide 50 bags of essential items for local homeless people. I like the thought of 50 lives being improved (and yes it does take much more than this for that improvement to be built upon but this kind of project is a good start and helps raise awareness of what the Society is doing).
The Society is also keen to stress if you can’t put a whole bag together yourself, individual items are very welcome as they will put these together with other individual items to create a full bag.
Also if you can’t make it the Above Bar Church on Saturday, donations can be made by text.
A text donation of up to £10 to support One Bag Drop can be made by:-
Texting the amount you would like to give and their code “BAGD10” to 70070. (For example, if you wanted to give £5 you would use the code “BAGD10£5” to 70070).
If you’re looking for something simple to bring to #OneBagDrop we are always in need of #tea #coffee and #sugar pic.twitter.com/uHyxSNY80Y
— Society of St James (@SSJCharity) March 22, 2016
Other ways of supporting the Society can be found on their website but include:-
They welcome emails at fundraising@ssj.org.uk and are glad to accept cheques which should be sent to:-
FREEPOST RSTA-LBCX-JUJR
The Society of St. James
125 Albert Road South
Southampton
SO14 3FR
The Society can also be contacted at Society of St James (@SSJCharity) and their Facebook page: Society of St James.
As with all charities, they would welcome any donations to be Gift Aided if possible.
The Society issues a regular newsletter called Opening Doors which brings news of their projects, shows how businesses and individuals support them, and success stories of where homeless people have moved on thanks to the Society’s support.
I would recommend signing up for their newsletter as it is very positive to know donations are going to a local charity and how these are being used to improve people’s lives.
I suspect a lot of local churches already support the Society, my church does so, but the Society is keen on all forms of support.
Frankly there is no one easy answer to the problem of homelessness but supporting our local charities who are directly helping the people caught up in the nightmare of homelessness seems to me to be a good place to start.
Chandler’s Ford Today reported how The Society of St. James supports the homeless people in Hamshire in this Christmas article.
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I’ve heard that Eastleigh Basics Bank is now well stocked and is short of storage space.
It makes sense now to donate to The Society of St. James this weekend as it is such a worthwhile event.
Thanks for the news, Janet. I presume Eastleigh Basics Bank will say when they need donations again.
Hazel Bateman normally takes the Chandler’s Ford donations to Eastleigh Basics Bank weekly, but a while ago there was a request for the kind people to stop donating, as EBB is looking for more storage space. EBB as a social work is such a success, and I hope the kind people in our community can also support Society of St. James, as homelessness is a huge social problem, and it could easily happen to you and me.
Currently we have a homeless man (I presume he is homeless) who has been sleeping rough at the Fryern Arcade for about 3 months. I’m sure many of us have met him, and tried to help him, but we might have our limitation. Society of St. James is a wonderful charity who offers their expertise to support many vulnerable, marginalised people in our society.
Eastleigh Basics Bank is still accepting donations from individuals and supermarkets, but has ‘switched off’ the churches for the moment. I think it makes sense to support St James at this time.
Thanks for the information, Hazel. I hope the switch off is a temporary one (oh that the problem of homelessness was!).
Pleased to report SSJ have tweeted thanks about this post. Let’s hope they have a good day on 2nd April.
Wonderful news. Glad to be able to support SSJ.