THE SAVIOUR TRUST has just been awarded £488,152 in Big Lottery funding over the next five years for their work supporting the homeless, AWAKE magazine talked to its chair, Marilyn Iwanuschak.

Getting the key to the door

A MAN was released from Armley prison yesterday morning and we’d housed him by the afternoon, explains Marilyn Iwanuschak. The ex-prisoner is just one of scores of homeless people helped by The Saviour Trust in Pontefract and Informal Learning in Wakefield who both provide supportive local housing and much needed help around life skills, financial management, mental health, employment and training, family reconciliation and alcohol and substance misuse.

But loving the dispossessed is so much more than putting a roof over their heads and the lottery award now means that both these agencies can take on extra workers to expand their teams as well as improve the supportive aspect of their service with more one-to-one mentoring and positive activities.

The Saviour Trust was set up as a charitable housing project by Vic Iwanuschak, Priest in charge of All Saints Church, Pontefract almost five years ago now. They have 14 homes providing supportive accommodation for around 30 people in the Pontefract area and run a weekly soup kitchen and drop in centre out of All Saints Parish Hall. Said Vic: “If I’ve learned anything then it’s that you have a responsibility to whatever is put at your doorstep and I push and push at making that work until I have done the very best I can because I would hate to face God and be found lacking because he put all these opportunities at my feet and I failed him. ”

Vic now wants to grow a similar service in the neighbouring diocese of Leeds and Ripon though the Trust’s invaluable links with the West Yorkshire Probation Service and Armley Prison.

Informal Learning is much more than a homeless support service – and while it has eight properties in the Wakefield district and aims to start a similar service in Halifax in the future - it is grounded in its youth and community work both practically and in helping deliver policy and training for different voluntary and statutory agencies across the diocese.

It’s lunchtime in its headquarters in The Barn in Agbrigg Road, Wakefield and youth worker, Hannah is running out the door with her craft box to lead an arts session with the schoolchildren at Sandal Magna School. Business Development manager, Jon is working with a group of parents in Netherton to help them deliver a much needed weekly youth session for some of their young people who have found themselves hitting the local headlines for anti social behaviour over the last few months. There’s The Bike Shed which gives young people – not so enamoured with school life - the opportunity to learn how to build a bike from scratch. And then there’s the holiday clubs, detached youth work, drop-in sessions for local young people, girls’ groups, fun fitness classes for schoolchildren to help tackle obesity, and mentoring and training in youth and community work. They plan to team up with Christians Against Poverty to offer a debt counselling service to help their clients become more financially independent and stable.

Marilyn said: “We don’t just want to come in and deliver something; we want to work with that community as a whole so they can engage with each other and own the projects together. “And it’s the same with those we house. Both Informal Learning and The Saviour Trust want to offer more one-to-one support. We want to provide an holistic service to enable them to reconnect - with their lives, their family, and their communities. “We all have a passion for being right there where we’re needed and everything I do is underpinned by my Christian values,” she said.

(Reproduced with kind permission of AWAKE magazine)