Russian Ministry Part 2

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Matroska dolls

This year we want to see a Russian speaking small group established at The Gateway Church from among the 4500 or so Eastern Europeans in the area. Daniel & Alisa Foytik are key in that – last year they did a great job making contacts and serving the Russian speaking community – to the point that we have had some glowing testimonials…

Louise Heinemann, Project Manager,KLARS

KLARS is a small local charity, providing advice and information for newcomers in their own languages (for details see www.klarskl.org.uk). We average 410 clients a month, but with only two full time and two part time employees, volunteers are a vital component. Alisa and Daniel Foytik helped us as volunteers throughout 2008, and were marvellous. They were cheerful and conscientious, reliable and hard working, coming regularly to our drop-in sessions, and taking endless trouble to resolve people’s enquiries and problems. They helped us and our clients enormously, in a very practical way. The queue in the waiting room is much longer now.

We miss them also in the wider context; they ran an international café which gave people background information on specific areas (e.g. health provision), thus forestalling some of the enquiries we now have to field. More importantly perhaps, they were helping to foster a group feeling amongst new arrivals, and people were beginning to share issues and help each other more. They were beginning to participate in wider community events, such as Around the World at the local Food Fortnight event. Daniel and Alisa organised a table of food which was one of the high points of last November’s event, raising awareness, and helping local people to see the positive side to migrant workers.

PC Pat Kavanagh, Norfolk Police

Daniel and Alisa Foytik are two young people who have given their time freely to assist me to break down the barriers of distrust that exist between the non-English speaking members of our community and new arrivals seeking advice and assistance from the police service. With their help I have been able to explain our processes and procedures in order to overcome the expectations that the police can solve many of the problems that new comers encounter; housing issues, rent and tenant disputes as well as pay and conditions problems relating to employers. This has resulted in less demand being placed on police services and the raising of awareness of organisations willing to provide specialist assistance and advice.

Great News…

A charity has offered to match all funding we get up to £6000! We have got £2760 pledged so far. Can you help – we would love to bring Daniel and Alisa back to see the breakthrough. 4 people gift aiding £80 a month would cover what we need to make a real impact among Russian speakers. More details at www.adventuresofachurchplanter.com/russianministry2009.pdf!

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR - ANDY MOYLE

Andy Moyle is a church leader and web developer. His biggest project is the Church Admin WordPress plugin and app. He also runs, mainly so he can eat pizza.