Thank you for changing lives in 2016!

You’ve made a positive difference to millions of people in 2016, through your generous support of the Red Box

In 2016, over £3 million was raised through the iconic Red Box. In England and Wales, you’ve supported the work of the Church in 98 dioceses across the world. Amongst other things, this year you have:

• • helped build 88 churches, chapels and convents
  • supported the training of 300 Mill Hill Missionaries
  • provided bicycles for catechists in 26 parishes in Uganda
  • assisted in the ordination of Mongolia’s first native priest

The money you raise through the Red Box helps provide the ‘ordinary subsidy’, which goes to a bishop in a mission diocese. These are the dioceses which are too young or poor to support themselves.

The diocese can then use that money for things which might not be glamorous or exciting, but which are essential for them to do their work. Things like a diocesan office. Or electricity for a parish hall.

Money from the Red Box also helps specific projects, like the one on the ‘thank you’ poster you may see at the back of church with your parish’s Red Box total on it.

Find out more about what your Red Box donations achieve.

Cardinal Otunga Girls Empowerment Centre, Nairobi

The Church relies on you to help people like the young women in Kenya you can see on the thank you poster at church. Young girls living in extreme poverty can easily fall into prostitution and sexual exploitation, just trying to earn a meal or a meagre living. Vulnerable and destitute, many are orphans or come from abusive relationships at home.

The Missio-supported Cardinal Maurice Otunga Girls Empowerment Centre in Nairobi rescues these young women from their situations and helps them. The Home cares for up to thirty students at a time, aged between fourteen and twenty years.

Many of the girls have never been to school. At the Centre they learn English, reading and writing. The Assumption Sisters of Nairobi also help them to regain their self-worth and self-respect by caring for them, and teaching them skills like housekeeping, nutrition and sewing. After two years of training they are able to earn a living using their newly acquired skills. Some go on to work in tourism, hospitality and catering; others work as seamstresses in factories or in their own businesses.

The Sisters continue to look out for the girls for two years after they have left the Home to ensure they are able to get on their feet and stay there. The hope is that through the newly acquired skills they will become economically independent and not end up back on the streets and slums of Nairobi.

And all thanks to you.

To give online to the Red Box, click HERE