On the afternoon of Thursday 12th September a group of 10 volunteers from Intel came to Christ Church and started to help with the preparations for the new Community Centre Garden. They spent the afternoon breaking up wood from trees that had been kindly cut down by local gardener and congregation member Ian Handy.

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Intel Volunteer workers

The weather was wonderful and the volunteers were buzzing at the opportunity to get away from their computers and to put in some real physical labour.

They also had time to help out with some planting of flowers and tidied up some of the graves at the front of the church in time for the Autumn Fayre on the 14th September.

The next group of volunteers came to Christ Church on Friday 20th September. They were from Nationwide, aged between 18 and 55 and were very keen and  raring to go well before the agreed start time of 9am.

After 4 days of solid rain, the sun was shining brightly and we were truly blessed by this as everyone was very pleased to spend the day away from their desks with a chance of getting a sun tan. The morning was spent finishing off the demolition of the tree wood as well as weeding, levelling and generally tidying the garden area at the back of the new Community Centre. Thanks to this excellent work, the garden is now ready to be landscaped, and  made good for the future users of the Community Centre @ Christ Church to enjoy.

The afternoon was spent weeding and tidying up the rose garden at the back of the church, the difference was amazing and one person visiting a grave of his loved ones thanked the volunteers for what they were doing. He was generally grateful that they had given up their time and their efforts had really touched him.

Nationwide Volunteers

Nationwide Volunteers

Jess Robinson aged 18 from Nationwide said that the day had been great for team building, it had given them a good sense of achievement to complete something and had really helped to boost team morale. Another one of the volunteers had never gardened before and also learnt something new as he had never known the difference between a weed and a flower before.

The help of volunteers is vital to the future of the Community Centre and these volunteers have really helped to make a great start to making the area surrounding the Community Centre a pleasure to see.