Christian group to help drinkers (From The Northern Echo)

Christian group to help drinkers

DRINKERS who find themselves a little worse for wear may be able to call upon the help of Christian volunteers to get home safely.

Members of Durham StreetLights have begun walking the city’s streets on Saturday nights, ready to help troubled revellers. Leaders say they aim to show God’s love by offering practical and emotional support.

They give out flip flops to girls in high heels, space blankets and water bottles, help people make telephone calls and find taxis, offer to chat and clear away glass.

Currently, 18 men and women aged 18 to 76 give up their evenings to help stranded revellers, often walking the streets until 3am.

Co-ordinator Peter MacLellan said: “The idea is to provide care and assistance to people who are out at night and for one reason or another are getting into bother. It’s about helping vulnerable people.”

Asked why volunteers get involved, Mr MacLellan said: “It’s the sort of thing we think Jesus would do. Jesus was always getting told off for hanging around with people who were drinking.

“If we want to help people where they are, we’ve got to get out to those places.”

Team leader Howard Bray added: “I always say: ‘I don’t know who you are, but I know that I care for you’.”

A pilot, 12 months in the making, began in March and a new volunteer recruitment campaign has now been launched.

Already, StreetLights members have helped a woman in her 20s who was drunk, had lost her passport, identification, money and mobile phone, become separated from her friends and begun chatting to a group of men, to find a taxi home.

Volunteers also carried to safety a man with cerebral palsy who had got drunk after learning his partner was pregnant.

On a third occasion, an ambulance was called for a man found nearly unconscious on North Road.

About ten churches are supporting the project, which is independent but has taken advice from Newcastle Street Pastors and Halifax Street Angels.

Volunteers must be aged 18 or over. All are given a full Criminal Records Bureau check and full training from the police, the Samaritans and StreetLights.

For more information, visit durhamstreetlights.org.uk.