Charities

St James Dalby - Church & Community - supporting charities

In 2019 we gave over £3000 to both local charities working on the Island as well as supporting aid over seas.

Our Charities for 2020
Through the fundraising work of the Friends and the Church we give to 2 Manx charities each year
a local charity operating on the Island and a Manx charity operating overseas .
We donate 10% of all our funds raised through events to support their work .

It's not how much we give, but how much love we put into giving.”
Mother Teresa

Alan's Gift :

Marie Goosen is Alana’s teacher in the Special Needs unit at St Johns Primary School.. she writes:
" In the unit it is myself and 3 amazing support staff. We are a small unit and have 5 pupils altogether. Alana is just such a beautiful little girl with such a beautiful smile and infectious laugh and we just love her to bits.

Alana has been diagnosed with Rett Syndrome at the age of 3.
And for those of you that don’t know - Rett Syndrome is a rare neurological disorder that mainly affects girls and is caused by a gene mutation, which is found on the x chromosome.

This gene contains instructions to make a particular protein that is vital for brain development. The gene abnormality prevents nerve cells in the brain from working properly.

It affects Alana in every aspect of her life and she is unable to walk or talk and will be totally reliant on others for support throughout her life. She also tires quickly and tends to sleep a lot.
Alana loves music and singing, intensive interaction, swimming, switch toys and the company of other children around her. She also has a physiotherapy programme and likes going in her standing frame.

Rett Syndrome makes it really hard for Alana to engage, connect and communicate with the world around her and life can be very frustrating for her. As her dad describes it: Imagine being stuck in a glass box, you can see and hear the world around you but you can’t interact with it – that is what it’s like for Alana.

So, at the moment we are really focusing on communication. We’ve got brilliant eye gaze technology as well as low-tech system to give her access to a robust language system and we are teaching Alana how to use these.

People with Rett syndrome can learn, and are able to communicate and deserve to be given the opportunity to show this. My team and I are constantly looking into what would aid Alana’s engagement and communication and reduce frustration. Some ideas have been a wheelchair accessible sand/water tray and a dark tent with light toys.
Thank you so much for choosing to help and support Alana.

Bees for Berundi :

By supporting this project, you are supporting the people in the world’s poorest country to afford the basics, (food, health care and education) that we take for granted in a sustainable way. This year is about finishing the work that we embarked on in Burundi. We currently have two projects supported by the IOM. The Three leg Beekeeping project. On the back of Harry’s fantastic training we are setting up a centre of excellence to ensure that the training is embedded in the community and that it is passed on from generation to generation This year we focus on Donate’s (phonetically pronounced Donartey) beekeeping journey, started in 2019 when she met the Island’s own Harry Owens for training. Below is some of her story: Donate is a cooperative coffee farmer and was invited with 10 other women from her village to attend the one-day training Harry was doing with 100 beekeepers (over 2 days) in the North.
“I’ve come 90 minutes by bus to get here today. I am very interested in today’s teaching about how to increase our colony and make more colonies in other hives – I want to put that into practice in my hives. With this knowledge I’d like to increase up to 10 hives from my 3 hives I currently have. We didn’t know about checking the hives before. If we’d have known about checking the queen maybe 2 of the colonies wouldn’t have left. That’s why I’m really grateful and hopeful for the future.” “I would like to do the beekeeping myself but as I don’t have any protective clothing, we all hire an experienced beekeeper to come and harvest the honey for us. How can I get some protective clothing? Can I come to the sewing training and learn how to make it myself?”
Donate was able to stay for the sewing classes provided by Anna Burden and Harry:
“The sewing workshop was so good! Even though I’m not a tailor I can still sew by hand. It was really beneficial to me. I’d like to do more training and get a sewing machine of my own one day!”
“Thank you so much for visiting me and my hives. It was very interesting, and I learned even more than on the training day and how to apply them to my hives” When asked what she will do next “I will fix the frame and ask the honey hub to help me get a queen extractor and wax foundations. Then I will fill my other hive”

Where there is charity and wisdom, there is neither fear nor ignorance. Francis of Assisi

As a church and community we’re committed to working together,
playing together and supporting one another in our local community and in the wider world.

We annually support :
Scripture Union IoM : working with our young people in schools across the Island. For more information visit: http://www.sumt.im/
Graih : a Manx charity based in Douglas in the Isle of Man seeking to love and serve the homeless. www.graih.org.im
The Leprosy Mission : bringing life back to those who have been abandoned by others. : http://www.leprosymission.org.uk/

Our Wardens Margy Killey & Jude Clague (left) present cheques To Mannin Sepsis and the Pahar Trust Nepal at the annual World Bonnag Championships earlier this year. The cheques were each for £476 raised through our fundraising during 2019.

Fairtrade Island / Fairtrade Church:

At Dalby we take Fairtrade seriously, with our “Fairtrade Cupboard –shop” in the Dalby schoolrooms selling over £1300 of produce in just one year! The hard work and enthusiasm of Ann Quirk and Pamela Gorst , who are part of our Friends team at St James, keep the shelves stacked with a wide range of Traidcraft products, available whenever there’s a gathering or function in the church and schoolrooms. Traidcraft is the UK’s leading fair trade organisation. Its unique structure - a trading company and a development charity working together - gives them a distinctive perspective on how trade can be made to work for the poor. Through regularly buying Fairtrade groceries from our cupboard-shop, the community at Dalby are helping poor farmers in the developing world to have a fair price for their produce as well as improved living and working conditions...... and we get excellent coffee and tea to drink and biscuits and chocolate to snack!

Collecting food for Griah & Women’s Refuge:
through Lent and Advent we have collecting boxes in the schoolrooms for food stuffs for Griah and Women’s Refuge IoM. This is mainly tinned foods, tea, coffee, and biscuits, personal toiletries and household cleaning items. Both these collections are supported by our church and extended community with contributions coming in from a wide range of people who drop by or attend different groups and activities in the schoolrooms.

Carol Singing : Each and every year a small group of us re-meet, whatever the weather, and armed with woolly hats and scarves , waterproofs, boots and torches, we head our way along the Dalby straight, up and down each and every farm tack , drives and gardens, to sing our little hearts out as our voices are carried by the wind to far and distant shores! The good folk at Dalby, well warned, are either out, or welcome us into their homes and reward our efforts with hot punch and mince pies ......and a generous donation to go to Hospice IoM ! This year we donated £302 for the pleasure of a beautiful evening, great company, a long moonlit walk, much hospitality and a great choir to sing with!

Toilet twinning : Our church loo as well as our Hub loo have been twinned with an enclosed loo for a community in Ethiopia. We now have framed certificates in our loos along with an information poster on the hygiene benefits of better sanitation and clean water.

Christmas Stamps: We also act as a collecting point for the humble postage stamp throughout the year with a special promotion at Christmas to go to the all island collection for the Leprosy Mission coordinated through the One World Centre.

Awareness raising & Campaigning : we have regularly updated information and campaign cards available in the church on global issues of human justice, climate and trade justice. Current events and issues are featured regularly in the local news sheet