Smethwick Church Action Network has a three-fold vision/mission statement which is:
- To serve our neighbours in times of crisis, offering a helping hand through difficult times. This includes meeting imminent needs such as food or fuel emergencies and practical items for rough sleepers
- To give our neighbours an opportunity to thrive and become their ‘best selves’, by helping to facilitate a transition from a place of need to a place of opportunity, hope and self-sufficiency (This includes helping our neighbours access long term support through Food Pantry, money management courses, accessing mental wellbeing support, up-skilling our neighbours with practical skills or partnering with local service providers such as ‘Back to Work’ or ‘Housing First’ to ensure a long term, sustainable outcome.)
- To be a source of hope - whether through meeting an immediate need with a high quality food parcel or through journeying with someone as they work with us and our partners to a more self-reliant and sustainable future. (As our neighbours receive the practical support outlined above, we hope they will find a warm welcome, a place to be accepted, supported and given hope for their future.)
Smethwick Church Action Network runs a number of projects to meet the immediate needs in our community, such as Foodbank, Food Pantry, CAN Café (currently closed) and our allotment. We also have short term projects such as emergency kits for rough sleepers and post-lockdown wellbeing bags for children and young people. To run these projects well, we rely on an infrastructure which involves administrative and practical costs. While we endeavour to use as much as we can of each donation directly on the project, we do use a portion of each donation to help run the background operations that make our projects possible.
We urgently need volunteers to support our Pantry and Foodbank projects. Please contact us on volunteering@smethwickcan.org for more information
