People Enjoying the Evening's Entertainment

Fantastic Evening of Indian Culture, Food and Entertainment

On Saturday 15th October the Indian Community of The Cathedral of St John the Baptist in the Narthex in Norwich hosted an evening of Indian culture, food and entertainment. The evening was a great success, with over 150 people in attendence and with funds raised for CAFOD’s Connect 2 projects in Rwanda. Thank you to everyone who took part and attended.

CAFOD World Gifts site >>

Capture the true spirit of Giving with our biggest and best range of World Gifts ever! Solve your shopping worries and help change lives by choosing from more than 24 gifts – including best-selling favourites and great new items – that will delight the people you give them to, and help transform the lives of people fighting poverty in the developing world.

"CAFOD helped me go to school and I’m hoping to move up a grade. One day I want to be an accountant so I can provide for my family.” James Joseph Vomo, Tanzania (Photo: Tom Blackburn)

Our gifts start at just £7 for a school starter pack, providing a child with all the essentials they need to go to school, including pens, books, a uniform, school fees and daily meals. Many parents and carers in developing countries cannot afford the costs of schooling. Even if education is free, they still have to find the money for uniforms, books and sometimes even soap and loo roll.

Other gifts include a vegetable garden for £10, chickens for £20, mother and baby care for £30 and training for a village vet for £60.

If you want to do something with a group, perhaps with your class at school, friends, family, or at church, fundraise as a group to buy a gift for someone who really needs it – or even for a whole community! 
£4000 pays for a community health clinic and £5000 will help communities find a secure place to live, where they don’t face constant threats of eviction and are able to find ways to live sustainably.

Creating a virtual village by fundraising to buy gifts from our catalogue can be a wonderful way for communities to work together on a project and learn about the issues facing people in the developing world.  More information on virtual villages can be found on our website:  World Gifts fundraising for community groups >>

CAFOD World Gifts site >>

This October CAFOD supporters can take advantage of a scheme that allows people over the age of 55 to have their wills written or updated free of charge.

More than a fifth of CAFOD’s overseas work is funded by gifts left to us in the wills of just 300 supporters each year.  The people who help us in this way aren’t wealthy or famous but they are extraordinarily kind and keen to safeguard our work for future generations.  Their legacies come in all shapes and sizes but every single one of them saves and changes lives.

We all want the best for our families…Imagine if you couldn’t feed your children – or weren’t able to safeguard their future.  This is the reality for millions of parents in the developing world.

By leaving a gift in your will, you can ensure that CAFOD will be there to help.  Your legacy could be the most far-reaching gift you ever make, supporting families and communities living many thousands of miles away, but still very much part of your global family.  You can help provide education for children, livelihoods for parents and clean water for whole communities.  You can supply medicine to the sick, shelter for those caught up in natural disasters and the support needed to transform lives after years of trauma, conflict and war.

If you have already taken steps to support us in this special way or are thinking about doing so, let us say a big “thank you” from the bottom of our hearts.  And if you live or work in the Norwich area and are thinking about making or updating your will why not take advantage of this October’s Free Wills Month?

This is a great opportunity to put things in order and provide for the people and causes you care about.  You must be 55 or over and resident in the UK to take part.

Family and friends come first, but when you make or update your will, please think about the lives you could transform if you were able to remember your global family too.  Through this special gift, your faith and values can live on.  You really could create a world that’s fair for all.

For more information visit www.freewillsmonth.org.uk, call 0845 020 4309 or email info@freewillsmonth.org.uk. 

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Food and water are in short supply and the spread of diarrhoea and cholera among the homeless is a very real fear. It is vital we get urgent supplies such as temporary shelter, food, water and cooking materials to the region immediately.

Please help them by giving what you can. We ask you to keep the people of Pakistan in your prayers.

We pray for the people in Pakistan who have been bereaved or lost their homes and possessions in the recent floods: that they may know they are not forgotten and may find hope of rebuilding their lives.

Lord, in your mercy

At the end of the day the pupils composed some poems to show their understanding of what they had learnt.

We have chosen a few to display, the rest can be downloaded here.

Bananas Galore

Bananas, bananas, bananas galore,

But whose life was then torn,

Was it the shipper or the shopper,

Was it the plantation or the cropper.

Who had the fun, who had the fight,

Bananas, bananas picking all night,

Who got the penny, who got the pound,

Surely there is enough money to go around.

Bananas, bananas, bananas galore,

Let no life be then torn,

Not the shipper, not the shopper,

Not the plantation or the cropper.

Bananas, bananas, bananas galore,

Who is the rich, and who is the poor?

By Jacob, Rhys, Alfie and Hamish

Kathleen Edmunds of The Sacred Heart Parish, East Dereham, has lost a fantastic fifteen pounds after doing a sponsored slim throughout Lent.  She now intends to carry on, and hopes to lose even more weight.

Schools around the diocese have also been doing their part, with pupils really getting involved with and enthusiastic about the message behind the campaign.  Special honours must go to St Thomas More Primary in Peterborough who raised a fantastic £1000 through their fundraising efforts!

Pupils at Notre Dame High School in Norwich worked throughout Lent, giving up their usual break-time snacks or donating their change at the end of the day.  In total they raised over £400.

Other schools doing their bit this Lent included St Augustine’s Nursery and Primary School in Norwich who raised £186 and St Edmund’s Primary School in Bury St Edmunds who raised £400.