LFIS - Light in the Darkness: Standing with Leeds’ Young People

This year has been a big year for LFIS. We’ve celebrated 30 years of bringing Good News to the secondary schools in Leeds, welcomed a couple of new team members, a new school partnership, and a new trustee. We’ve had some incredible Godly encounters with our young people, during Prayer spaces at Abbey Grange, a Retreat Day at Corpus Christi and a weekend away with Abbey Grange. We’ve been gifted with some generous financial offerings and prayerfully supported by our incredible partner churches across the city. What a God we serve!

However, coming into the last half term of the academic year, things seem very gloomy, dark and unfavourable.

Schools are facing significant financial hardship and are having to make staff redundant and ultimately, direct support to students will no longer be available. Not only is this having a significant impact on our budgets for next year, we as a team are deeply concerned about the vulnerable young people who won’t have any access to support. I feel it’s often not shared or considered the kind of cases we work with. This week alone, our team have worked with victims of sexual assault, teenage parents, witnesses of domestic violence, teenagers who are being groomed, teenagers whose parents are sexually exploiting them, body dysmorphia, eating disorders…the list could go on. These aren’t low level cases. These are cases that should be taken by professionals but as they are also stretched and at capacity, our team relies on the Holy Spirit to resource and guide our conversations. But these students won’t get picked up by anyone else. And this is what, as a team, we’re facing at the moment. We need the income so we can still deploy our team into schools to support these young people that so desperately need light in their darkness. So please, if you’d like to support our awesome team, you could do one or many of the following:

1. Pray for us regularly, that our team would be protected and guided by the Holy Spirit

daily.

2. Become a trustee and help our team navigate the current climate we find ourselves

in.

3. Volunteer with us as a mentor, a listening ear to those young people who need it, or

come and serve drinks and food at our Wednesday after school drop-in in the church

hall

4. Give financially to our work. Whether as a regular donation or a one off sum, we can

ensure that all funds go to on the ground support for Leeds’ most vulnerable young

people who need the love of the Father.

Please email me, Emma Chadwick, at emma@lfis.org and we can send out prayer requests, bank details or volunteering information. Thank you for sharing a heart for the young people in our city.

God bless,

Emma

To visit the LFIS website, click here