Manchester: Students to stage massive Pancake Day fundraiser

heap of pancakes - Wiki images

With Shrove Tuesday just around the corner, students at Manchester Universities’ Catholic Chaplaincy are getting geared up for one of their most popular events of the year – the Pancake Day charity fundraiser. The Chaplaincy is home to a vibrant ‘SVP 1833’ (St Vincent DePaul) Society. Under the spiritual guidance of the newly re-instated Jesuit chaplains, the student volunteers are expanding in numbers and dozens of new, exciting projects are emerging.

This year, the proceeds of the Pancake Day fundraiser will go to the newly opened L’Arche community house in Didsbury, in the hopes of helping it to get fully established. L’Arche is an international project which builds communities of prayer, support and solidarity for people with learning disabilities to live in as respected and vital members within a family atmosphere.

To make connections with the community leaders of L’Arche, Manchester’s project leader Kevin Coogan was invited to give a talk at the chaplaincy, before members of the SVP began attending L’Arche’s monthly meetings. Despite temporary setbacks in being able to accommodate core members at the present moment, these community meetings have proved to be opportunities to begin to build friendships with them.

Not satisfied with simply showing moral support, members of the SVP are now taking action to help L’Arche in more practical ways. Current SVP President, Bradley Taylor says “events like the Pancake Day fundraiser are fun and easy ways for the SVP to be able to help L’Arche to fund some of basic necessities for their community, such as books and arts and crafts tools.”

Bradley added that SVP are raising funds to be able to put on some events for the L’Arche core members and support workers to enjoy. “We are really excited about some of the events we have in the pipeline, especially a potential trip to the Lake District. That would be a real treat for the L’Arche core members, and SVP volunteers would be able to help out ensuring a well-earned break for the L’Arche live in assistants too”.

SVP volunteers will spend all of Shrove Tuesday making and serving pancakes to members of the public, the proceeds of which will be presented to L’Arche at their next ‘Boogie Night’, which will be held on Friday 15 February.

For more information on L’Arche Manchester, visit: www.larchemanchester.org.uk/
To learn more about ‘SVP 1833’, visit www.muscc.org/svp.html