In their busy lives, Christian youth workers are often more responsive rather than reflective, and don’t always have the opportunities to stop, share, plan and pray. One of the aims of Doorsteps, Viva’s partner network based in Oxford, is to provide this space. We are identifying a greater collaboration between youth projects, and currently have …
BY ANDREW DUBOCK As Viva celebrates two decades of partnering grassroots networks of churches, organisations and individuals to help transform communities around the world for children, we invite you to join us in reflecting on a year of successes and challenges – and to look at how the global Church can be effective in protecting …
BY HANNAH BARR Around 90 people who attended Doorsteps’ mental health conference last month have returned to their communities informed and supported about the subject and empowered to make a difference. The event at St Andrew’s Church, north Oxford, entitled ‘A Christian Response to Child and Adolescent Mental Health’, drew participants from across Oxfordshire, and …
BY HANNAH BARR This is Mental Health Awareness Week (14-20 May), with the NSPCC revealing that schools in England made almost 125,000 referrals for specialist help since 2014, with more than half of these coming from primary schools. Across the age spectrum, the stats on mental health struggles look bleak. Last week, British universities said they …
BY HANNAH BARR We might think that the gap between the sacred and the secular in a Western context has increasingly become a chasm. And yet, you don’t have to search too far to discover that the ways the sacred – something of who God is – permeates the world around us. The writer Leonard …
“It’s dangerous to go alone! Take this” is a well-known quote from the classic 1986 Nintendo video game ‘The Legend of Zelda’. Find out why Hannah Woods recalled the phrase as she reflected on a growing schools’ work with which Viva’s partner network Doorsteps is involved. I’ve done youth work in East Oxford for 12 …
Resource cuts in the UK mean there are fewer statutory support services for families going through difficulties. Teachers struggle to know where to signpost families for help, when, for example, they see children turning up to school not having had breakfast. In response, our Oxford-based network, Doorsteps, is piloting H2O (Here to Help Oxford), a …
BY HANNAH BARR “The Bible contradicts almost everything I say about myself. It says I am worthy of love; it says I am unique and valuable. It says I am of incomparable value to God.” (Katharine Welby-Roberts.) It’s World Mental Health Day today and I’m going to let you all in on a secret: I …
BY HANNAH BARR YOU ARE LOVED Outside of my work for Viva I help lead the youth work at my church in Oxford and last month I took some teenagers to the Christian festival, Soul Survivor, which involved camping for five days. Now, I hate camping. It is not something I consider fun and even …