The Vision Newport Night Shelter

After working with our clients over winter period of 2008 and seeing clients struggle through the cold period Teen Challenge has completed a report showing the need for emergency accommodation in Newport. A volunteer went to London to visit various night shelters she was encouraged by the response from the different projects she saw, they were more than happy to support anything we wanted to set up in Newport including training.

After completing questionnaires with our clients who said December and January were the worst month living on the streets because of the Christmas period and the freezing weather. Teen Challenge has now completed the report and has started to set up a pilot Newport Night Shelter project starting in November with one night per month for training purposes then opening throughout December and January.

We had managed to secured 7 local Churches in the Newport area that would accommodate the clients and if we can secure another 7 Churches we will continue to open through February and March working in partnership to get every client into long term accommodation by the end of the Night Shelter.

The Newport Night Shelter is inexpensive and will be mainly run by trained volunteers. We have already had a response from people wanting to volunteer although we will not be recruiting until after the launch of the project September/October time.

Below are places the volunteer visited when working on her report in Hackney London.

Food will include an evening meal and breakfasts for the clients who will be referred to the Newport Night Shelter by outside agencies we are already in touch with A & E the HM Prison Service, Gwent Police and Newport City Council as this project is being developed. (Pictures of the night shelter were taken in London by the volunteer who completed the report). A full power point presentation is available of the project.

 Below is a little promo video we made, in the early days: