After a busy year organising Prayer Day, leading worship, developing our spiritual corners and raising funds for charities at home and overseas, our children's Faith Group enjoyed visiting a local CoE Primary School, to meet with their Faith Group. We learned all about the work that St James' children have done and we agreed that we would like to work together in the future on joint projects, including how we offer sanctuary to our communities.

Please see a selection of photos below from this project which has taken part over the last few months...

We were thrilled to receive a copy of the Every Child Should Benefit Action Report 2023 from Citizens UK. The report argues for the urgency to extend eligibility for Child Benefit to ALL children in the UK.

In this document you can read all about the workshops that took place at St Mary's School this term - starting on page 32. Read it here.

The report makes compelling reading and we are proud to have played a role in ​its creation.

St. Mary's welcomed Natasha, Charlie and Simmone from the Lewisham Renters Union to deliver a workshop for parents about housing rights. Everyone has a different story and experience to share, however there were many common threads including disrepair and frustrations at dealing with landlords both in private and public sectors. LRU taught us about what we are entitled to expect under current housing law and what to do when things are not as they should be. There are many organisations available to help including;

• Shelter - https://england.shelter.org.uk/get_help 0344 515 2000 
• Citizens Advice - https://citizensadvicelewisham.org.uk/contact-us/ 0800 231 5453
• Justice for Tenants - https://www.justicefortenants.org/ - providing support to private tenants on various issues (deposits, disrepair, eviction)
• Advice 4 Renters - About us — Advice for Renters - for private tenants

Working together and joining forces is always the most powerful way forward. So come along to future housing meetings in school or check out the London Renters Union. See below for more details:
https://londonrentersunion.org/​

St Mary's took part in a very special International event as we joined a live online global assembly to learn more about child refugees. Thousands of children took part in the event. Children were interviewed as they shared their experiences and  there were live reports from refugees camps. This has helped to raise our awareness of these issues in advance of Refugee Week.

Year 4 enjoyed these workshops as they explored friendships over several weeks through a series of fun activities.

Our journey to becoming a Sanctuary School is included within this Resource Pack (see page 20) and why not enjoy all of this valuable resource to find out more about the work of Sanctuary Schools.