Volunteers make a difference!
Members of Girlguiding Waterbeach – Rainbows, Brownies, Guides and Leaders – volunteered alongside parents, grandparents, carers and parishioners at St. John the Evangelist Church in Waterbeach to make a huge impact on this community space.
The Big Help Out event was organised by Girlguiding volunteers to mark His Majesty the King’s Coronation, which encouraged people to ‘Join in, Lend a hand. Make a change’.
Dorothy Druitt, from the Eco Church group at St. John’s, guided the Rainbows, Brownies and Guides to complete a Biodiversity survey of plants and insects in the churchyard. The survey will help the church on its way towards earning a Churchyard Conservation Award from the Wildlife Trust in Cambridgeshire, a scheme which encourages people to work to increase the wildlife of their churchyard. The Eco Church group are also working to achieve their silver A Rocha Eco Church award too.
Children and Families minister, Kirsty Morris, worked with the young people to create and organise resources in the church room, including making Communion boxes. Young people and adult volunteers alike pitched in to tackle the weedy paths in the churchyard, tidy up at the old burial ground, maintain paths and clean the memorial stones around the church. Some of the Guides even foraged the weeds – in this case, wild garlic – to make a delicious wild garlic bread pizza!
Local Girlguiding Commissioner June Stephen said of the event, “It was an amazing team effort with past and present members of Girlguiding, their parents and even grandparents coming along to the big help out. I am very proud of what we achieved with everybody working hard to tidy, organise, clean and weed what is an invaluable space for the community.”