A Community Fun Walk ending at the Manly Oval for a huge kids/family concert is in the planning stages for Nov 7th. Possibilities include entertainment, speakers, sausage sizzle, and a 'Kids at the Park' Event (similar to Jazz at the Domain). Funds raised will go toward capital project goals in Manado helping families release themselves from the poverty trap.

The Salsa Dance night is now confirmed for 5th November at Harbord Diggers - coool! If you have any event ideas please contact Vanoosh on 0414 765409.

A Salsa dance night is taking shape as one of the large events planned in the 3 month project window of Sept, Oct & Nov. The Harbord Diggers venue was booked today by John Chambers of the Vineyard Church. One of Australia's top salsa dance instructors will be helping host the event along with a well known Sydney Salsa DJ!

In the last week Ian Freestone has put together an awesome array of educational resources: from a seven week bible study for home groups to kids and youth material. All this under the banner of AAP! His church will be starting the bible study series this coming week.

The resources pack is available to anyone. Let me know if you would like to see it. I have it available on CD.
 

Today the Ruach Neighbourhood Churches had their Call to Action for our project. I presented the project alongside Ian Freestone, their pastor and the leader of the Manly Ministers Fraternal. It went really well, there were a great number of pledges of support, help and funds to help kids and families.

We welcome them as the 5th official church to have had such a 'Call to Action'. The others are small boat big sea, St. Paul's Seaforth, Seaforth Baptist and St. Matthews. Five others are to follow in the next month.

I met a builder today who has recently been undertaking odd job work for friends at church, and instead of receiving payment for his work has been asking them to donate his fee to Bridge of Hope through AAP instead, to help lift families out of poverty in Manado. Wow, what a fantastic idea! That is INITIATING something!

Well today and yesterday a group of about 20 of us from four churches sold near enough 2000 white wristbands on behalf of the MakePovertyHistory campaign for the Global Whiteband Day. We were SPEAKING up on behalf of the poor. It felt good to be doing this and chatting to the Manly locals. There were many passionate people and we were greatly encouraged by their response.

SPEAK up on their behalf.

From a few conversations I have had recently I think we need be careful how we communicate who we are to people. Otherwise once tarnished always tarnished!

As we are a Manly project, not a church project, let's start with something like this "This is a Manly Community project involving community leaders and residents across the Manly region, including Council, businesses and by the way at least ten churches are uniting behind it as well."

Sound good? Gives us a different feel doesn't it?!

Yesterday we had our first steering committee meeting. On this we have Barbara Aird (Manly Councilor), Mike Frost (Pastor & Author), Doug Sewell (Businessman), Ian Freestone (Pastor) & Jim Collins (Assistant Pastor).

It went really well and a lot of great decisions were made to keep our focus on Manly partnering with one community, Manado. We are now working at getting mayoral approval of our grander plans; we saw the Mayor already a few months ago, but now we are looking for his and the concil's solid backing.

If this is achieved this will be a huge help as we start looking for venues and support from the local community. It give us the credibility for other members of the community to get on board. It is an exciting and important step as we need to be seen as a Manly community project NOT a Manly churches project.
 

Hi Action Team

Welcome to the AAP Blog. I hope that this will be of help to keep us all up to date with what is happening in the project. We are such a diverse and virtual team and so much exciting stuff is happening that it will be great for everyone to be able to access the latest news at any time by simply looking at this blog, rather than picking up the phone to lots of people.

Initially I will post general news about AAP and then we may open it up so that coordinators of other streams, such as schools, hospitality events etc can post things too, to keep their teams updated.

I would love to know your thoughts.

Blessings
Jim