Slum Survivors

Young people slum it to raise awareness

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The car park of Hereford Baptist Church was turned into a Slum Dwelling recently when a group of young people spent a weekend away from the comforts of home and all its mod coms as part of Slum Survivor. This national initiative from charity Soul Action is a simulation experience designed to raise awareness of poverty and to raise money for Soul Action partner projects, which work in poor communities in South Africa, Zimbabwe and throughout the world. Participants were sponsored to take part in a variety of challenges.

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The first of these challenges was to build individual shelters from cardboard, scrap timber, plastic sheeting, anything useful in keeping the cold and wet out and the warmth in. The basic food for the weekend consisted of lentils with rice and water. Another challenge was to fetch buckets of water from the River Wye and carry them back to the ‘slum’. The group chose the long route back to church via Broad Street and High Town. A number of stops on the way gave ample opportunity to distribute leaflets explaining the plight of real slum dwellers and to engage in conversations with passers-by about conditions that around 1 billion people in the world live with every day.

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During the weekend special visitors to the dwelling gave talks and led discussions on homelessness and helped in creating craft items for sale made from old CD discs and scrap material. Bible study sessions, general discussions and fun times filled the rest of the time.

The group’s reaction to the weekend is best summed up in the words of Ben Menzies (age 14): “The experience really got me thinking about just how hard it must be for people that actually do live in the slums, and that they do it all day everyday with no comfort of going home after a couple of nights.”

The weekend was organised and led by Rev. Jason Borlase, Youth Minister at Hereford Baptist Church, who feels that “in undertaking such a challenge, raising money and awareness, we live out the call of Jesus to take care of those who are the poorest, most downtrodden and in need, and those classed as the least in our world.”