Pillar 2 - Sally

Pillar 2 - Sally - TRANSCRIPTION

SUMMARY KEYWORDS dream, important, life, community, feel, treat, scene, snowball, cooking, cook, neighbour, place, talk, mainstay, extended family, thankful, nationalities, dancing, Lincoln, family

00:30 To me, a good community is a diverse community - where we each value one another because I'm firmly of the belief that everybody has something to bring, and it's really important that that is recognised and encouraged. And it's where people reach out to one another. So I suppose I'd like to think of it as an extended family where people can feel it as long as you say they've got something to offer to the community because we're all valuable. And Well, my faith is the base of my life. So the verse for me would be love your neighbour as yourself. And I think if every time I stopped and really thought, would I want to be treated like this, then that would really help.

The way we treat one another. So we should be important to each other. We had a lovely example of our neighbour who was actually 90 last year, and he was quite a private gentleman, but through lockdown we found out that he didn't like cooking. So as we cook for a family, we said for several days of the week, we would cook for him as well, because as in my mind, I think if I didn't like cooking and was living on my own, what would I want somebody to do for me? So I think that for me is a really good principle is taking care of each other and more than that - so say treating your neighbour as you'd want them to treat you. There are words from a song, that say all my life you have been faithful all my life you have been so good, with every breath I am able, I will sing the of goodness of God. We have been as a family through quite a lot of quite challenging situations.

And that has been my experience. When I trust in the God I know who is a faithful God, then I could cope with any sort of situation because we have to understand that not everything is under our control. And it's often about the way we respond to things rather than actually what is going on in our lives. So that has been a mainstay of my work for many years now.

I volunteer at a place called The Welcome in Lincoln Green and my dream would be that it does exactly what the name - its that people are all nationalities, all ages, all cultures come and find a welcome there that they can come and be accepted. And loved, not judged. Able to dream when we first opened up again. Towards the end of the lockdown was that people would just have a place they could come where they wouldn't be isolated in their own homes. They could come and they could talk as they needed to talk or not talk if they didn't want to talk but have a hot drink or cold drink, a biscuit and fruit where they just come and feel a part so my dream would be that that would snowball. And there will be many places in the local community where that can happen where people feel that they are part of it, that valued a special because everybody is special, and that they could come and find that place when it can be so my dream is as I say, we will end up being so busy that it's too smaller premises to fit everybody in.

So, for me, it would look like I think, almost a street carnival scene where people were dancing and clapping all in their different modes, some of them some more more able dancing than others, but that's fine, because we all have an individual way of expressing. So we have a scene of great joy, where people are joining together in celebration of their community that they live in.