Date Checking and Much More at the Care Centre

One of my highlights from last half term was arranging for thirteen boys to come and visit the Care Centre at Vineyard. There were five from St Albans Boys School on one week as preparation for the collection the boys will be organising in February. Then, the following week, eight boys from Verulam came following their collection in September, which they all had helped with.

The trip involved a tour of the whole building including seeing the auditorium, the new youth space and all the various elements of the Care Centre while hearing about the heart for sharing God's love in a practical way to those in the community. The boys asked insightful questions and were surprised by the scale of what happens here.

They then gave an hour of their time (albeit while gladly missing a couple of lessons at school) to help in the warehouse and seeing what happens to their items once they’d been donated. With the help of some willing Step volunteers and the teachers who brought them, they sorted items into categories, created emergency packages and date-checked items. With the latter, they did find an item that was best before 2016, which sadly didn’t quite earn them a certificate for the Care Centre’s ‘most out of date item of the month award’ – their creative version of Employee of the Month.

We had a fantastic morning with both groups, who were all hard-working and enthusiastic, and we’re excited to see how these relationships can grow in the future.