20th Anniversary Stories

2020 was our 20th Anniversary as a project, and to celebrate we interviewed some of the people who were there right at the beginning of JRP. Here’s their memories of that time, in their own words.

Richard Clark - Founder

We were not known among the women as great providers of resources at the time, but we were known for our love.

In Easter 2000, a team from YWAM arrived and felt called to focus on intercession during the three months they were with us. Part of their work became prayer walking the Red Light District, in the middle of which St. Andrew's is set.

By 2005 we were able to conduct street outreach up to three times per week. Volunteers were meeting the women on the street and would offer them food and drink, while seeking to build relationships with them. This led to home visits, or the provision of clothing or other basic care. Our aim was to spend as much time as we could with the women when they were available, sharing the love of Jesus.

Our base was originally a derelict flat attached to the vicarage. I found trust money to renovate it. When outreaches began, we quickly discovered that women were calling at the vicarage to ask for help. As ours was a family home, it seemed sensible to take them next door to the flat, and it became our base for drop-in as well as for outreach from then on.

In 2005 we had regular involvement from a growing number of churches, we had a minibus available for use for the first time, we were just setting up prison ministry at New Hall, and we were beginning to receive funding through charitable trusts, rather than just church and private donations.

Stephanie Smith - Staff

Every time we add a new staff member to the team, it’s exciting – just seeing how it’s developed from having one or two staff members, to now having eight!

I joined JRP as a volunteer in 2004, initially as an outreach worker on Wednesday afternoons. When there were more women working on the streets in the daytime, we did an afternoon outreach. I was involved in outreach for 7 years, and then joined the management committee and board of trustees. In 2016 I came off the board in order to join the staff team as Operations Co-ordinator!

It's generally been great to see the project grow over the years, but I think that starting to branch out into off-street visiting was really significant because it opened up new opportunities for reaching women.

Some of my favourite memories at JRP are from outreach years ago. There was a volunteer who used to bring her dog on outreach, in the days before the minibus, when we went out in volunteers’ cars. We also had these little signs saying ‘Jericho Road Project’ which we’d stick in the car windows so that the women would know who we were as we approached. The signs were always falling off!

There was such excitement when we got the first outreach van! We used to have a fixed rota, so there was a Monday outreach team and a Friday outreach team. We became quite close as a team because you’d always be on outreach with the same people. There was such a great atmosphere of community and friendship – as well as compassion for the women.

Lucy - Previous Project Manager

I’ve never been anywhere else where we had such a sense of being part of a bigger plan, being part of something that preceded us and would go on after us. We were just there to play our part.

In so many ways, JRP was a place of paradoxes. From the outside it could look small and fragile but, as time has shown, its foundations are strong. Money and resources were always in tight supply, yet we had what we needed (often just in time); but not everything that we wanted. The foundations? Decades of prayer had preceded the project.

I have many memories of miracles, divine coincidences, call it what you like, but it’s the women who have left a lasting impression on me and witnessing Jesus’ love for them.

Outreaches were always rather surreal. The winter nights could be particularly challenging. It was the small things that could offer glimmers of hope - a cup of hot chocolate and a homemade cake. “Tell the lady who made these,” proclaimed one as she ate some homemade tiffin in the back of the minibus, “she’s Jesus she is.”

And then there are the women who prompted us to grow and adapt. “If you want to help us then you need to see us in prison”. So that is what we did, launching the JRP prison visiting and resettlement programme. The drop-in centre didn’t come about from one conversation, but rather many, many visitors. The women just started to arrive and so the drop-in centre began.

Drop-in meals were the most special times. Anyone around at lunchtime was invited to eat. Service users, staff, volunteers … all women together, sat around a table, enjoying each other’s company, sharing the same food.

Jesus said whatever you do for the least of these, you do for me - and in doing so made it clear that as we serve those on the margins of society, we actually serve him. In so many ways the encounters with the women we served were deeply spiritual. I am privileged to have met them and been shaped by them.