Our Parish now Supports Azalea

Azalea means beautiful and dignified in ancient Greek and its mission is to empower and facilitate sustainable transformation in the lives of the men, women and neighbourhoods impacted by sex trafficking through several different projects. Sex trafficking is when an individual is coerced, forced, or manipulated into providing sexual access or services to a ‘punter’ often through threats of, or acts of, violence from a perpetrator.  So what work does Azalea do?

First of all, Azalea provides pastoral care and practical support to guests when they access Drop-in: a shower, laundry facilities, prayer space, kitchen and lounge, plus a therapeutic programme and Alpha course. Second, working closely with the Border Force and Beds Police, the Tamar project offers support to women caught up in international sex trafficking. Third, the LAST project helps to mobilise local communities to create local solutions to sex trafficking. Azalea now also consults and partners in locations outside Luton and the UK, with a national and international advocacy presence. Alongside all of this, Azalea continues its original outreach work, with a team of volunteers walking the streets. And finally, the Flint project mentors men who purchase sex to change their habits and recover a full and healthy attitude to sex. Exceptionally, Azalea Luton remained open throughout the entirety of the pandemic.

But Azalea is primarily a prayer movement, active in believing that it is the love of God that sets all free from the impact of sex trafficking, that rescues women from being sex trafficked and sets them on a path to recovery, and that allows the restoration of right relationship for men who have previously purchased sex. The truth of the Gospel informs every aspect of Azalea’s work and runs like a thread in all that we do.

There website is: www.azalea.org.uk if you wish to learn more about this Project.

ALSO – Ruth Robb, the Founder & CEO of AZALEA will be the 11.30am Morning Praise Speaker on the 5 November 2023; from this date there will be a pink box at the back of St Nicholas Church for donations of toiletries which we will be collecting for this project;  Mothers’ Union St Albans Diocese is also supporting.