A ministry the community can bank on

Through Elim Leytonstone’s social care ministry, the smallest conversations and actions are making a world of difference. Chris Rolfe reports.

The Muslim mother talking with the staff at Elim Leytonstone’s food bank was desperate.

Having escaped domestic violence, she still needed to free herself and her two little boys completely from her vindictive husband.

He might not have been abusing her physically any more, but he was doing all he could to ruin her life.

Recently, he had registered their car in her name and then run up speeding fines that repeatedly forced her into court.

Through contacts built over the food bank’s 25-year history, staff contacted a domestic violence group whose solicitors helped the woman obtain a divorce free of charge. She and her boys were then able to restart their lives.

This is just one of many examples Elim Leytonstone associate minister Gemma Miller shares about the church’s growing social care ministry which serves its multi-cultural East London community.

“You have people who are very well off in houses worth £800,000 plus, then others who have one room in a multiple-occupancy home,” she says.

“At our food bank we serve around 120 people over two days on a quiet week and closer to 190 on others. This can equate to more than 1,400 people being fed every two weeks as many come to top up low-income budgets and extortionate rents that leave them with very little money for food.”