News and Updates

The Spring/Summer edition of the Isle of Wight Street Pastors newsletter is now available.  You can view/download an electronic version  or look out for the printed version in local churches and elsewhere.  If you have an outlet for distributing newsletters and would like to receive a batch please contact us.  You can also download past newsletters on our downloads page.

Some of the delights that await within this edition’s pages are:

Pastors Praised by Community Safety Partnership

The Isle of Wight Community Safety Partnership is a group drawn from the three main emergency services and aims to find better ways of keeping Islanders safe.  They are clear that Street Pastors have a positive impact on crime and anti-social behaviour issues:  “One agency that has had a profound effect upon (our) strategic objectives…is the ‘Street Pastor’ scheme.”   >>>read more

What Street Pastors do

Happy New Year

A phrase that’s heard over and over again at the start of each year, but New Year often starts in less than happy circumstances, with many people ending up spending the start of a fresh year in the gutter or a police cell.  Street Pastors were out in record numbers for this year’s New Year celebration to try and make sure everyone had a happy and safe start to the New Year.   >>>read more

Help Street Pastors

While all the Street Pastors are volunteers and give their time freely, we still have a range of other costs, and rely on voluntary donations to keep going.  We are particularly grateful to our regular donors who give £10 a month and ensure we can keep helping people on the streets each week.   >>>read more

Happy New Year

A phrase that’s heard over and over again at the start of each year, but New Year often starts in less than happy circumstances, with many people ending up spending the start of a fresh year in the gutter or a police cell.  Street Pastors were out in record numbers for this year’s New Year Celebration to try and make sure everyone had a happy and safe start to the New Year.

As well as our regular patrols in Newport and Ryde, three teams were out in Cowes, which always sees a huge influx of revellers on New Year’s Eve.  All the teams had a busy night, and made a real difference out there.

We saw a young woman looking lost and on her own. “Good evening, are you ok”, we asked , “No not really” she replied. “I’ve been split up from my friends and they are all at the Anchor, and I don’t know where that is.” “Would you like us to walk with you to find them?” we asked. Very gratefully she accepted our offer, saying that she wasn’t comfortable walking through the town on her own. She took a chocolate, and we walked together to find her friends. Re-united she thanked us and we move on. We see 2 groups of lads shouting at each other.  With a big smile we offer one group some lollipops saying how we didn’t want them to get into trouble tonight. After a minute or so, they are laughing and joking with us and give us a big hug.

These two interactions appear fairly simple and low-key.  Irrelevant almost.  The reality is that collectively these encounters lead to genuine change.  A young ladies evening was saved through a simple action that enabled her to get back to her evening’s fun without having to feel unsafe along the way.  The early intervention to diffuse anger and aggression potentially stopped a situation escalating into violence, injury, damage to property and diversion of the police from other activities.  Instead we had the opportunity to talk to this group of lads, relate with the real people under the “laddish” masks.

These changes are hard to quantify – how many fights do we stop?  How many people do we leave happier then before we met them?  What we do know is that crime has dropped in the areas Street Pastors operate, people report feeling safer with Street Pastors around, the police are adamant that we have a genuine positive effect.

If you’ve had a positive experience of Street Pastors, if a Street Pastor has made your life better in some way, please let us know.  We always love to hear back from people.  You can use the contact form on the website, comment on this post, or chat with us on Facebook or Twitter.

So, all that’s left is to wish you a happy, safe and fun year.  Let’s make our streets better places to bel in 2011.

Street Pastors are making a real difference on our streets.

All the Street Pastors give their time freely – around 100 hours a year each – but there are many other costs involved in running the scheme.   We have received support through various grants, awards and donations, but rely on individuals giving regularly each month to keep Street Pastors going.

We have big plans to expand our work, but need help to achieve this. If you think you could help Street Pastors to transform our streets by giving £10 each month to support our work, then please download, complete and return one of our individual giving forms.

If you can’t commit to giving regularly you can make a donation online. If you’re not in a position to support us financially though, you can still contribute. Encourage one of the volunteer Street Pastors – whether you see them at church on a Sunday, at work in the week, or on the streets on Friday night. Pray for us, and the people we seek to help. Tell your friends about Street Pastors.

“Street Pastors have had a particularly positive effect around the issue of alcohol related crime in ‘hotspots’…deployment of Street Pastors and the way they operate have reduced the number of Police (and) Ambulance calls to these areas and allowed them to focus on dealing with more serious incidents.” (Chair, Community Safety Partnership”.

“Our tactics for policing the island’s town centres at weekends are based on preventing potential problems from escalating into crimes. The skills of (Street Pastors) reinforce our work in identifying situations where people are at risk of becoming victims or being arrested because of their behaviour.” (Inspector Terry Clawson)

“We notice the difference on Saturday when you’re not here” (Pub Manager, Newport)

“Street Pastors , got great respect for you guys” (Shouted from window as SPs passed)

In a gloomy economic climate and with local and central government cuts starting to bite the people who can make a real difference are us. You and me, together. Street Pastors is one small start in the community taking seriously the principle of “Love Your Neighbour as Yourself” and applying that in a way that will transform our streets.

Edition two of the Isle of Wight Street Pastors newsletter is now available to download, packed with news from the first half of 2010 including

• Community Action Awards 2010
• New Volunteers Commissioned
• Quotes from the new team
• Growth in prayer team
• High Sheriff’s award