Things have stalled a little as the contractors are having to remove a lot of asbestos (a very fashionable ingredient in council buildings in the 1960s). Here are two photographs of the Companions' Centre - it is no longer possible to visit it without special breathing equipment.
Our projects in Glasgow are ambitious and require a team of 20+ to manage them properly. They will have both a Catholic dimension and a general dimension - providing in two ways what Pope Benedict called a "Courtyard of the Gentiles". Our partner in this is Father John Keenan, parish priest of St Patrick's Church, Anderston (just along from the Mitchell Library) who is also chaplain to the University of Glasgow.
Project A is based in a tower-block in Anderston (behind the church) where we are renting a shop-unit.
The plan is that we will use the unit for a variety of activities to support the people in the two tower-blocks above us. What we offer in the medium and longer-term will depend on the results of Stage 1 but some core activities will get us started: a) a free internet café for It coaching, b) mother and toddler afternoons, c) OAP coffee mornings and probably d) English coaching for recent immigrants, asylum seekers etc. The project will grow when we have established what the people need, as opposed to what we think they should have.
Stage 1: this is an audit of the building and is likely to be slow, at times discouraging work. We have to have a large number of volunteers, in pairs, who will go round every flat in the two blocks to post a flyer through the door telling them to expect us and who we are, with a specimen ID card on it. Easy.
The next bit is the hard bit. A few days later we have to reassemble the team to go around and actually knock on every door - many/most will not answer and you may even get an angry response - and try to get the occupants to answer a few questions without seeming like a nosey do-gooder. Some of the houses will need several visits before we get access, and in some cases we may never get it. The vital thing is that contact is made and that careful notes are taken of the type of occupants. Are they lonely old people, do they have needs, special needs, are they immigrants with poor English, are they single parents with difficult children to manage - the range is endless. The aim is for us to know what they need and for them to find us palatable enough to get them to start popping into the Companions Centre on the ground floor to build up the sense of being part of a community.
Stage 2 will be organising and carrying out what we actually hope to do for and with the residents, mostly in the Companions Centre. We hope to establish a rota of helpers, mostly older adults but with your help who can be a presence in the building in small groups. We do not anticipate being open all the time or even every day - the vital thing again is that we state clearly WHEN we are open and stick to it.
Those of you going away to universities and colleges can still help during holidays etc - especially with Stage 1 - the dead-lift of getting it all started in late June.
Once I have a reasonable number of positive responses, I will invite you all to dinner at Viva and Fr Keenan and I will fill you in.
There is a form you can fill in on the Glasgow Project Page - please be realistic in the time that you offer: it is much more important to be REGULAR than to be spasmodically FREQUENT. Project B is based in St Patrick's Church itself and will be announced later.
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