Harvest Festival 2017

The Renewal Programme’s 2017 Harvest Festival

The 12^th October was a big date for The Renewal programme. It marked the day of our second Harvest Festival celebration in the style of the old East End, it saw our community in Newham come together for a wonderful celebration of sharing and caring.

We kicked off the morning with a warm welcoming speech from the Chief Executive officer of The Renewal Programme, Ruth Bravery. She opened the morning by thanking everyone for coming out and for generously donating food & nappies towards our food bank for destitute refugees & migrant run by The Refugee & Migrant Project.

‘On behalf of everyone at The Renewal Programme, I would like to offer our heartfelt gratitude to everyone who made our Harvest Festival such a wonderful celebration of sharing and caring for each other in our community.’

We had invited Shahid from Minhaj-ul-Quran mosque in Forest Gate, he expressed why is a proud supporter of The Renewal Programme and the Newham community should continue to support charities like The Renewal Programme.

Our Trustee of one year, Elis Matthews, shared the history of the Harvest Festival celebration and why sharing and caring is good for us. Elis also took the time to thank everyone for the food and nappy donations; as well as thank the organisations who have donated prizes towards the raffle draw and cake competition.

‘Harvest is a good time to reflect on sharing, people who don’t have much can be the most generous’,

We then welcomed Chandana & Javad, who are two students currently working towards gaining recognised qualifications with our Training & Education service. They shared with us why they loved living in Newham and how The Renewal Programme has supported them to achieve positive changes within their lives.

Youth performer Jessica, who attends our weekly Youth service, graced us with 2 songs she had written especially for the Harvest Festival.

Keeping to the theme of the Old East End, we had the opportunity to meet the Pearly King of Forest Gate & the Pearly Queen of Bow and experience an old-time music hall thanks to the Brick Lane Music Hall. From the Hockey Cokey to I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles, Brick Lane Music Hall had us all dancing in our East End Spirits.

We’d like to say a huge thank you to all of the generous organisations who kindly donated raffle prizes for our raffle & cake competition.

We had so many entries for our first ever cake competition from carrot cake to chocolate cake. Thank you to everyone who had entered our cake competition and to our judges for participating. We are so happy to our entrants were able to have fun.

Congratulations to our winners!

The Harvest Festival came to end with lunch. Thank you to Fresh Eric’ Cakes for donating Victoria Sponge, Chocolate Fudge, Carrot & Orange & Red Velvet Cake towards our celebration. We would also like to thank Euroglobe Distributors in Thames View for donating 10 cases of water, Celtic Bakers for donating surplus loaves of delicious bread and Lotus Biscoff for donating 10 boxes of biscuits.

Thank you to everyone who came out to join us celebrate, such support means that we can continue to support people in Newham achieve positive change within their lives.

You can view more photos here.