Shelley Blunden, our Director of  Schools Work, reports:

This academic year has been filled with many moments where we at Engage have been privileged and honoured to see how God is moving in the lives of young people, for some of whom it was for the first time.

There is so much I would love to share with you but in this space I would not be able to do it justice, so here are some key highlights.

We ran another Encounter youth event in April – the third time since we initiative began. It was a fun time of fellowship, food, a talk on prayer and worship. It brought together young people from many churches across Woking and beyond, and of any denomination.

We saw young people coming forward for prayer and also some starting their journey of faith that very night. The next Encounter is on the 18th October 2025: more details will be released in September.

Through our mission of sharing the gospel message through faith, hope and love, our ministry in schools is going from strength to strength. The Engage team will be sharing with you all the other great activities that have been happening.

Thank you for your ongoing support, both financial and prayer. Your help goes a long way enabling Engage to reach out sowing seeds of faith.

The Christian Union at Woking College and Woking High School continues to grow, with students being eager to lead and dig deeper into scripture: growing as disciples and coming alongside each other in their faith journey. Digging deep into scripture has also meant looking at some more challenging areas of life today – this too has been embraced.

This club has been able to continue for many years thanks to support from youth workers and curates from local churches, who have a passion and vision to see this ministry grow –we send you all a BIG “thank you”!

Primary school work: encouraging and rewarding

Our work in Primary Schools has been consistent since 1994, when Engage (then known as SCAt (Schools Christian Action Trust) was established to lead school assemblies.

Our work in primary schools has expanded over the years to many other areas of education and support.

Our Schools Worker Bronwen Hall reports: “Our Primary School work this year has been both encouraging and rewarding.  We led prayer spaces at Horsell Junior School and, for the first time, Chobham St Lawrence.

“We continued our lunchtime prayer club at Horsell Junior School. These have focused on why we pray, different ways to pray and how prayer can help build our relationship with God.

“We also provide weekly help at Noah’s Ark club in Ottershaw, leading one in three of the sessions.  We use Open the Book stories as the base of all the sessions and provide story linked crafts for those we lead.”

“The prayer spaces and programs across all our clubs are really varied and have provided many thought provoking conversations with children, staff and volunteers.”

Our Assemblies Team provided 32 “in school” assemblies across 24 schools. The assemblies are always really well received and schools are very keen to invite us back for the next run.

Our three presentations over the year (Harvest, Christmas and Easter) were all recorded and made available to other schools in our area, so they can enjoy the messages of these three themes.

Bronwen added that the assembly team is always looking for new volunteers. She said: “If you have a heart to bring the Bible to life for primary schools in our area please get in touch.” For details of what is involved please contact our office –  the telephone number and email address areat the bottom of this newsletter.

Engage supports students’ well-being

We are passionate at Engage about supporting young people in their well-being and mental health. An important part of this support is one-to-mentoring with students dealing with difficult challenges.

Our Mentoring Lead, Bisi Olaye, explained: “Through mentoring and other activities with young people, we recognised friendship as an area that many of them found challenging.

“To address this, we began running workshops on ‘Developing and Maintaining Healthy Friendships’.”

It comprises six weekly sessions, each with a separate theme: “Course introduction”; “Friendship types and levels”; “Deepening friendships”; “Handling conflicts”; “Self-care” and “Course summary”.

Bisi added: “Through these work- shops we are equipping the young people with knowledge and skills that they can use to strengthen their personal relationships, which improves their well-being.”

Engage has run two sets of the workshop this year. They have been greatly appreciated by those who attended. This comment by one student is typical of the grateful feedback given by many of them: “It has helped my friendships a lot and it’s a good group to be part of”.

The workshops are clearly enormously useful to young people.

Bisi confirmed she will be running more of them in the next academic year.

You can watch our assemblies videos on YouTube

Did you know we record all our assembly dramas for Primary schools and you can watch them on our YouTube channel?  To see all our videos click here.