Our Summer 2024 issue of Being Alongside magazine is out!
This issue has a big focus on what has been achieved so far with your support through our £20,000 two-year grant programme.
Our chair Ben Wilson provides an update on the grant programme, and sets out the options for extending the scheme beyond its planned two years, depending on how the assisted projects have fared and on how our charity funds are doing.
After a print version of the report of our 2024 conference, the issue goes on to look in more detail at two of our newly supported projectse—Sunflowers Café at Freemantle Baptist Church in Southampton and Pippins Community Centre in Axminster, Devon—and we’re also delighted to feature an update from Sue Clayton of Arnold Methodist Church in Nottingham, letting us know that the mental health befriendly and support group for which provided seed funding back in 2016 is still thriving in 2024.
Our main “think piece” is provided by John Vallat, who shares his thoughts on the meaning and practice of “being alongside”, including the very handy mnemonic “ALIVE”, which helps us to remember some of the key aspects of how we can be alongside someone as we can journey together: Accepted, Listened to, Involved and Included as an Individual, Valued, and Encouraged.
Fr John Cullen offers a thought-provoking review of Lorna Tucker’s recent documentary on homelessness, Someone’s Daughter, Someone’s Son, which closes with a debate on how the phenomenon can be addressed in a holistic way.
Our new patron Dr Larry Culliford provides a feature version of the address he gave to our 2024 conference, in which he thoughtfully reveals how he learnt to become the person he is, and how he helped to found the Spirituality and Psychiatry group within the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
The retrospective theme continues as Jamie Summers offers reflections on his almost 30 years of involvement in our charity.
And finally, as part of our continuing series looking at groups with similar aims to ours, our editor Trevor Parsons meets Renew Wellbeing, the dynamic Christian charity which, in less than a decade, has grown a network of 260 wellbeing spaces and places where it’s OK not to be OK. (A special mention to any keen-eyed readers who write in to tell us which of those 260 spaces is currently benefitting from our financial support! Ed.)
Our magazine is freely available to all digitally. If you would like to enjoy it in glossy paper form, you are warmly encouraged to become one of our supporters.