SVP 'Rise to the Challenge'

Julie Etchingham

The St Vincent de Paul Society (SVP) is launching Rise to the Challenge, an innovative awareness-building campaign designed to help people better understand the work of the SVP, especially during the Covid-19 crisis, to raise funds to help those in most need and to encourage more people to join.

Traditionally, the SVP runs an Awareness Month programme every September to coincide with the feast day of St Vincent de Paul on the 27th. This is usually a predominantly parish-focused activity. However, 2020 is not a usual year. Due to coronavirus, there are strict limitations on what can be done in parishes and fewer people are attending Mass in person with many opting to watch streaming services over the internet.

As a result, the SVP is launching Rise to the Challenge, focusing attention on the amazing and vital work of SVP members, staff and volunteers during the pandemic with thousands of hungry people fed and friendship and support offered to the lonely and isolated. The campaign aims to hit an initial target of £100,000 for the SVP's Covid-19 recovery programme.

The campaign invites people to show their support for the SVP in one of three ways:

- Join the SVP either as a full or Temporary Auxiliary Member, helping with 'knock and drop' food deliveries, or as a volunteer at a St Vincent's Shop or St Vincent's Support Centre, doing their bit to help people in need during the crisis

- Take the fundraising challenge - raise £100, or any amount, to help pay for activities now and during the post-Covid economic recovery period

Make a direct donation to the programme

Although people are being challenged to help in one of these ways, the SVP hopes many people will do all three.

ITV newscaster Julie Etchingham, whose father is an SVP member in her home parish in Leicester, is a patron of the Rise to the Challenge campaign. She says: "I'm very proud to be patron of the SVP's Rise to the Challenge campaign. Growing up as Catholic, I've always known what extraordinary work its members do. Quietly, without fanfare, supporting families and individuals enduring the hardest of times.

"In a society suffering an epidemic of loneliness and deep-rooted poverty, the outstanding work of SVP members is needed more than ever. It might be in supporting someone who has just left prison, someone who's in debt or unemployed, a family in crisis due to ill health or bereavement, people for whatever reason feeling marginalised, disenfranchised, or simply lonely."

Julie, an award-winning journalist and presenter of News at Ten, adds: "I'm proud to support their life-giving work, and hope you will too as the SVP rises to the challenges of this next century."

The SVP has provided materials and suggestions to take part in the Rise to the Challenge campaign.

A web page: www.svp.org.uk/rise suggests fun ways people can raise money.

Here is a small selection of things people can do to help:

- Donate your birthday - instead of getting presents ask family and friends to donate to the SVP Covid-19 Recovery Fund in your name.

- Organise a virtual pub quiz over Zoom - have each person pay £1 or £2 to enter and instead of a prize, the winner just gets glory and a round of applause

- Follow in the footsteps of Captain Tom - climb Mount Snowdon on your stairs, run a marathon in your back garden or walk the equivalent of Land's End to John O'Groats in your local street

On the subject of the Covid-19 crisis, Pope Francis says: "The pandemic has highlighted how vulnerable and interconnected everyone is. If we do not take care of one another, starting with the least, with those who are most impacted, we cannot heal the world."

Pope Francis points out that the pandemic has "exposed the plight of the poor and the great inequality that reigns in the world", adding: "The harmony created by God asks that we look at others, the needs of others, the problems of others, in communion."

SVP National President Helen O'Shea comments: "In a world facing not only the unprecedented crisis of the Covid-19 pandemic, but also the ever present spectres of poverty, loneliness and inequality, it is easy to become downcast, but we must rise to the challenge. We must meet these challenges with compassion, friendship and understanding.

"Our Rise to the Challenge campaign is raising awareness of the serious issues millions of people in the UK and across the world are facing today and in the future. Rise to the Challenge gives everyone in the UK the tools they need to help those in urgent need of practical support, friendship and understanding."

She continues: "Now is the time to 'Rise to the Challenge'. As our founder Blessed Frédéric Ozanam said, 'Let us do without hesitation whatever good lies at our hands'."

For more information or to donate to the SVP's Rise to the Challenge campaign, go to www.svp.org.uk/rise
Twitter: @SVPEnglandWales (#SVPRiseChallenge) or telephone 020 7703 3030.