Peterborough rough sleeping charity celebrates five years of helping the homeless

A Peterborough charity which provides invaluable support to rough sleepers is to mark its fifth year of operations.

The Garden House, which is set within the Cathedral grounds on Gravel Walk, will celebrate five years of helping rough sleepers on Sunday October 8.

As well as offering access to a wide range of support services, The Garden House offers food and drink, information and advice to homeless people. All of these services are coordinated and run by project workers and volunteers.

The refuge is overseen by Light Project Peterborough, a charity whose mission is to ‘enable and equip the church and community to heal the broken-hearted, set free the oppressed and bring good news to the poor.’

Steven Pettican is the CEO of Light Point Peterborough. He said he was proud of the work The Garden House has done since it opened in 2018.

“It has been an honour to work with some amazing staff members and volunteers to help thousands of homeless people in the past five years,” he said.

Most of the people who visit and receive support from The Garden House are males aged 18-65. Their reasons for coming are as varied as the backgrounds they hail from, with many fleeing family breakdowns or navigating the fallout from losing their jobs. Sadly, some people end up at the refuge after escaping situations involving modern slavery or domestic violence.

While Steven is proud of the project’s achievements, he is realistic about the challenge that lay ahead:

“We continue to see the need [to support rough sleepers] in Peterborough increase,” he said.

The project’s devoted work has earned praise from the highest places. Indeed, the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby remarked that he was minded to “put the Garden House right up at the top of the list for good models for this kind of work” as he was most impressed by “the gentleness and the openness, the sophistication and the thoughtfulness of the approach.”

The Garden House is open Monday to Friday at Archdeaconry House between 10am-12:30pm and 1:30pm-4pm. It is closed on Wednesday afternoons. Anyone looking to find out more can do so by following this link.