The Communities Project - Free WiFi for communities across the UK
Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 7:36PM Road trip – Day three
Narthex Sparkhill
Based at St John’s Church in Sparkhill, Birmingham, Narthex Sparkhill is a registered charity that works to promote inter cultural harmony. A large area of its focus is helping newly arrived refugees and asylum seekers.
Nigel Brookhouse whom I met told us “We work with refugees & asylum seekers who have no access to funding, we provide free resources to pregnant refugee asylum mums, we do advice, letters, help with forms, we run a refugee drop in centre and we provide free homework club to low income primary school children, we help people with debt support and with benefits and provide safe space for people of low income and ethnic minority communities, we are within the 4% most deprived communities and our facilities are provided for us by the local church who also use the facilities to support the local community.”
I stayed at the church with Nigel for some time, we chatted about Narthex, Freerunner, other charities and the state of the world in general. I got a lot out of it. Nigel is another one of those people who is working away diligently in the background, making a difference to peoples lives day by day.
We wandered around the huge church and tested how far the signal propagated out of the Narthex office. As expected, it didn’t make it as far as the front hall where events are sometimes held. Still, if the free service in the main office is successful hopefully some budget for an extension might be scraped together.
Nigel pointed out an enormous mural of Christ in the main church hall which is remarkable in that the feet of Christ are disproportionate to the rest of the body. Perhaps the artist thought that walking on water must require feet the size of small boats? Nigel said that unfortunately it is very likely that the mural will be removed or covered over if plans to renovate and change the layout of the church go ahead.
The installation completed, I left there a feeling lighter than when I went in, happy that we had chosen Narthex.
You can find out more about Narthex Sparkhill by visiting their website:
http://www.stjohnsparkhill.org.uk/WTPEZU95.htm
Thanks for reading.
Stuart Dixon
Reader Comments (1)
How has the Freerunner wifi service been beneficial to your community/charity?
It has helped low income and destitute people who have no access to the internet get access via the hotspot, if they have no phone or computer we let them use our account to access the net. it has also helped refugees keep in touch with family back home.
Low income local families and destitute asylum seeekrs and refugees. They have really appreciated access as they have funds to go to internet cafes etc--Narthex Sparkhill, St John's Church—Birmingham