Christian Aid Week 2022

Once again the Harpenden Christian Aid committee organised a delivery only drop of House-to-House collection envelopes across the town. As always this was organised through local churches. A return visit to collect the donations is not required so we have found that more people were willing to volunteer and we managed to cover a substantial area of the town.

The envelopes were marked with various places they could be dropped off when filled. The final figure for the
collection was £4960 which together with £950 that can be claimed through Gift Aid comes to £5911. This is only £300 short of last year’s figure. It appears that this reflects the national figures for the House-to-House collection which is satisfying.
However, this is only a third of what we used to collect. Hopefully the arrival of the envelope will have prompted many people to give online; there is no way of estimating what this might amount to.
The theme for this year’s fund raising is the climate crisis in Zimbabwe and the effect that drought, on top of Covid 19 and area conflict, is having on food production. Our funds will help in some small way towards Christian Aid’s projects there.
We also had a stall outside High Street Methodist on Saturday 21 May, the end of Christian Aid Week, and were pleased to have people handing in their envelopes or making donations. For the first time we had access to a card machine, courtesy of High Street Methodist office, and this was used by several people. The way forward!
The committee’s thanks must go to all who helped with the week in any way.

Jenny Clark
Harpenden Christian Aid Treasurer