As part of the Southend Churches Winter Night Shelters the Sacred Heart’s Shelter will start on Wednesday 5th December and run for sixteen weeks. Firstly, we would like to thank you all for the generosity of the time you have volunteered to make this project possible. While offers of time are still extremely valuable we now have more pressing needs. We are collecting items that will be needed to run the shelter and offer as much help to the guests as possible. The items we need are: new adult sized underwear including socks, toothbrushes, sanitary products for women, ‘hotel freebie’ or travel size soap, deodorant, shower gel and toothpaste etc. Warm adult sized jumpers; t-shirts, trousers etc. and winter coats would be very welcome. If two people in your parish would kindly organise the collections of clothing and toiletries and liaise with myself I will arrange regular collections by the Knights of Saint Columba to ensure your church does not become overburdened with the volume of donations that I’m sure will be generously forthcoming. Thank you. Liam Rand, Night Shelter Co-Ordinator liam.rand@btopenworld.com or 07952 954833.