CAFOD is naturally the main source of appeals and the chief beneficiary of your generosity. Your giving averages £3560.00 a year and almost double in time of disaster appeals in 2000 for example you gave £5639.00

Traidcraft. The painless way of supporting producers of food and goods. The stall sells a wide variety of goods; Tea, Coffee, filter and instant, Breakfast Cereals, Chocolate Bars (assorted), Dried Fruits, Rice, Sugar, etc. Sales in the last year brought in around £30.00 a month which enables us to make small but significant gifts to smaller projects. This really gives us our only assured income.

Harvest Festival. The proceeds from this go to Cafod. We offer the fruits of Harvest to God at our celebration Masses and then buy back our gifts to provide for those whose harvests are poor or have failed. We know you will give from your plenty to those in need.

Florence Asiimwe. We were asked to sponsor a student, Florence Asiimwe through her course at Uganda Martyrs University where she studied Ethics, Religion, Law, Justice, and Human Rights. The behaviour of some politicians in this region shows that these subjects are important to the future of Africa. The bulk of the £2,700.00 for her fees was raised from events such as cake stalls, a jewellery stall and several contributions from events organised by the Social Committee to whom we are extremely grateful. We paid the last tranche in November 2000. .

Pasada. In the Diocese of Dar el Salaam , The Maryknoll Missionaries have established a clinic for AIDS orphans. Tragically most are infected and have a short life expectancy. The clinic recently enrolled its sixth thousandth orphan. It seemed to us to be worthy of our support and we have made four gifts to them, £150.00, £160.00, £244.00 and £250.00 each donated by you in our Advent Mince Pie and Mulled Wine weekends.

Amnesty International. From time to time we bring to your attention the plight of prisoners of conscience and ask you to write letters on their behalf. Not easy to judge the response but if you are not informed you cannot be aware of the problem .

Low Technology Small gifts make a world of difference. £100.00 provided 20 fish cages for villages to farm fish. A like sum set up a project teaching people to make simple clay stoves which burn practically any fuel. £100 for six donkey ploughs for villagers in the Sudan; £250 provided solar food driers to preserve winter supplies for two communities in Nepal.  Similarly, Sight Savers can work seeming miracles with such small gifts.

Peace War threatened in Iraq. We organised at short notice, a peace vigil which was supported and attended by many parishioners and members of other churches in the town. A two hour vigil, broken up into fifteen minute periods each beginning with a hymn, a prayer, a suitable reading from scripture followed by a prayer. The remainder of each period was taken up with reflection, sometimes silent, sometimes with a spoken reflection, and sometimes accompanied by a Taize chant. Periods and prayers were led by parishioners and by Anglican, Baptist, and Methodist church members.

Christian Aid Collection. Sacred Heart parish joins with the towns other churches in this work of mercy and mission, knocking on doors and asking for help on behalf of the poorest of people. In this way we reach out to the unchurched and involve them in the work. Not an easy task but many hands could make the task much lighter. If you would be prepared to collect from a small number(30?) of houses or a block of flats we could tailor the task to suit you. Over the last three years we collected:2000 £483 2001 £572 2003 £739

One World Week. Again a joint effort involving all the churches and Oxfam. An event open to the public and focused round a theme. A fashion show, or a speaker on a specific subject .There are Fair Trade stalls, including Traidcraft, Tear Fund, the Lima Women's Co-operative and others. This years event was a forum on making Leighton Buzzard a fair trade town. Support was unanimous and at a follow up meeting a steering committee with representatives from the churches and civic bodies was formed to take the project forward.

Voluntary Service Overseas Our next project was less ambitious. We took a share in the support of Malachy Mallon , a recently qualified teacher from Luton who had volunteered to become a teacher at a primary school in Nigeria. We raised £30.00 a month for his eighteen month stint. He sent us progress reports and photos of the school and students. On one visit home he came to visit us and we all went to The Boot at Soulbury for a briefing session in relaxed surroundings . To quote from Malachy's final appraisal " From the perspective of the employer, the placement was judged to be very successful as all objectives were realised.". Since this project we have not undertaken any further regular commitments.

Jubilee 2000 Cancel unpayable debt.  Many countries borrowed money in the 1970's, have repaid the debt many times over and still owe more than they borrowed. Jubilee 2000, a coalition of Cafod, Christian Aid, Tear Fund, Oxfam and other agencies has been campaigning to have this debt reduced or written off. Petitions and postcards to world leaders have achieved much.

Odds and ends. We are careful not to put all eggs in one basket but to leave room for appeals brought to us by individuals. Small sums of money can have real effect in the lives of small communities or individuals. Past projects have been gifts towards a water tank for an African village, a Buffalo to a Filipino village as a plough draught animal, and educational aids for African schoolchildren. The Luton Day Care Centre, The Simon Community, the Churches Housing Action Society are some of the U.K. charities helped.

Finally, the team. Presently they are Yvonne Edwards, Teresa & Nicola Wiseman , Erika Pratt, Mary Flach, Tanya Butson, Louise Milne, Michael Williamson, Jim Rueth and friends of the team. Contact any of us if you feel moved to join the team.