POP MINISTRIES

The Be-Kind Campaign was maintained throughout the fiscal year. Time was invested in feeding the poor in Peterborough Ontario. We spent time visiting the area to identify locations where the poor and homeless reside i.e. tent city street people near the safe injection sights. We recruited volunteers who could prepare sandwiches and purchase snacks drinks and water for transport to Peterborough. We also identified locations where we could distribute the food and engage with the homeless in sharing music ministry food and God's word. We piloted this initiative Christmas Day 2023. We developed a benevolence policy that allowed for providing children's clothing to vulnerable children. We fed the homeless during 3 specific outreaches in 2024 just after Easter Thanksgiving and Christmas.

We have been working on a reconciliation project to engage volunteers and work with the Indigenous community to build on youth programming and create original material with Canadian Indigenous cultural stories that have a corelating bible story for children that will be accompanied by related crafts as well as a bible and accessory with PoP branding. For a small charity like hours that is rebuilding after COVID it will take some more time. We have continued to work with a volunteer subcommittee. Effort has been focused on securing an Indigenous Elder that we could partner with to develop a meaningful initiative in the spirit of 'Nothing for us without us.' We are still working on Indigenous cultural stories but require an Indigenous partner to validate the corelation between cross cultural Indigenous stories with biblical stories before publishing. We are also working on an outreach to women and youth vs. only teenage girls. We have continued ministry outreach and discipleship to women. Time has been invested in making community connections with young adults 18-35 yrs. in the Renfrew County and Hastings Highlands. The young adult bible study was launched early 2025 and effort to promote this initiative were explored in 2024.We hope to expose these young adults to the Feed the Poor program.