Local Friends
Local friends of PFS are different organisations who support the aims of Pray for Schools. They are all involved themselves in schools work in some way in their local towns and cities.
Active Christianity in Thanet Schools (ACTS)
ACTS works in local schools alongside churches to support the Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural Development of children and young people in Thanet. Our vision is that every young person has heard something of the gospel from someone who believes it to be true by the time they leave secondary school. Our aim is to inspire a generation of children and young people to engage with the Christian faith and explore it’s values.
BeSpace
BeSpace is an Oxfordshire based Christian charity that equips local churches to facilitate prayer and reflection spaces in schools and other areas of the community. We are passionate about seeing every child, young person and adult have space to pray or reflect in their daily lives. Practically this looks like transforming rooms in schools or in the community for day or week long events where children, young people and adults can experience prayer and reflection in creative ways.
Since 2010 we have reached over 140 schools in Oxfordshire and seen over 400 prayer and reflection spaces take place across the County. We are excited to see the day when every church in Oxfordshire is running prayer and reflection spaces regularly in their local schools and the wider community, giving children, young people and adults the opportunity and tools to pray or reflect in their daily lives.
Bury Christian Youth
Bristol Schools Connections
Bristol Schools Connection provide coaching and training to individuals and teams from churches in the Bristol region to help them build supportive relationships with their local primary and secondary schools. We encourage people to pray for their schools as they look to serve them in a wide range of ways: cakes for staff, hearing children read, running a club, hosting a Christmas/Easter Trail, providing RE lessons, Collective Worship or Prayer Spaces.
Canterbury Christian Schools Work
What if, every child heard and knew they were loved; every teenager was equipped in emotional health; peace was encouraged in every part of school life and the local church was empowered to make a difference in their local school. This is the vision that drives Canterbury Christian Schools’ Work Trust (CCSWT) who provide spiritual and emotional education in Canterbury, Faversham, Herne Bay & Whitstable. This is outworked through two employed workers (Primary & Secondary) and our team of volunteer mentors. In schools, we deliver self-esteem courses, collective worship, prayer events, lunch clubs and one to one wellbeing mentoring. We believe prayer is the highest importance of our work. To this end, we encourage our supporters and local churches to regularly pray by providing weekly blog posts, quarterly newsletters and one-off events such as a ‘Pray for Schools Evening’ during prayer for schools fortnight.
Christians and Sheffield Schools (Cass)
Christians and Sheffield Schools (CaSS) offers training and resources to help Christians serve schools and to help them to invest in the next generation – 95% of whom are not in church, but who are in school.
Some of the ways CaSS does this include, organising a large annual conference, Learning Hubs, School Chaplaincy Training, loaning out resource boxes (e.g. crosses, grief & bereavement), running a resourcing website full of ideas & links and training Open the Book groups. This is all underpinned by prayer – a monthly CaSS prayer group, encouraging school/parent’s prayer groups and by being a networker for Prayer Spaces in Schools.
Christian Connections in Schools
Wayne Dixon has a passion to point young people to Christ and see them become disciples. He has for the last 30 years worked through Christian Connections in Schools, which has the vision of ‘Making Jesus known to children, young people AND staff in schools of Slough, Windsor & Maidenhead.’ It is in partnership with Scripture Union.
‘Christmas Unwrapped’ & ‘Easter Cracked’ introduce Primary children to the Christian faith. https://youtu.be/OvEBYlycwRA
Wayne believes prayer is the most significant contribution we can make to our schools and has encouraged staff prayer groups in two Windsor schools.
Christians in Calderdale Schools
Our experienced team (4 part time salaried workers and many volunteers) offers a wide range of activities to support our Borough’s schools.
We work in both Primary and Secondary Schools and offer ‘It’s Your Move’ books as part of the transition between the two. We pray together at least once a term, often joining in with an existing prayer breakfast or church prayer meeting and thus spreading awareness of our young people.
We have a monthly prayer diary and always include items for prayer in our regular mailings to our supporters with urgent matters for prayer being sent round the trustees.
Christian Outreach In Newbury Schools
Christian Outreach In Newbury Schools began over twenty years ago to ‘Take Jesus to School’ in West Berkshire. We work in primary and secondary schools to provide quality activities to enrich the school curriculum with a focus on Christianity.
In ‘normal’ times, our team of three go into schools to run clubs, take assemblies or RE lessons and lead special events such as The Christmas Gift, Easter Eggsplored and It’s Your Move! They can speak to hundreds of children and their teachers every week. At present we are using technology to provide as many of these activities as we can, and to be innovative in reaching out to, and supporting, both staff and pupils.
The future of schools’ work is uncertain; it could be a long time before schools will allow visitors in. We pray that we will be able maintain and even develop relationships and that this will encourage the use of our online resources, as well as make it more likely that schools will be keen to welcome us back when they can. We pray for all students and staff during these strange times, especially that decisions will be made with wisdom and not out of fear.
Christian Youth Outreach (CYO)
CYO is a community of people, both staff and volunteers, working in Colchester schools and FE colleges. Our work encompasses chaplaincy, mentoring and a wide range of projects that support the pastoral, spiritual and faith development of children and young people.
We’ve been helping young people to explore prayer through our prayer spaces in schools since 2008 and regularly encourage local Christians to pray for schools in lots of different ways.
FACCTS
Fleet & Crookham Churches Together in Schools (FACCTS) serves children in 11 of the 12 state schools in Fleet and Church Crookham in North East Hampshire. We employ three part time schoolsworkers and have around 50 volunteers who help with a range of activities across all age groups. We run Open the Book in primary schools. We host lunch clubs in Junior Schools; all Year 6 children attend 90 minute Christmas and Easter presentations and receive an It’s Your Move lesson. We open a Prayer Space to a number of different schools. We have a couple of CU groups in each of our two secondary schools and have introduced a Youth Alpha after school in a town centre location. We’d appreciate prayer particularly on developing further our working together with our member churches so as best to help each child on their own faith journey.
You can visit our website here or via the link below. We have Facebook pages for FACCTS and FACCTS Prayer Spaces.
The Joy Foundation
The Joy Foundation brings Collective Worships, lessons, Fun Clubs and workshops to more than 20 primary schools across Lincoln, enabling hundreds of children each week to find out about Jesus’ love for them.
We are supported by a group of faithful pray-ers, who receive regular updates on what we can thank God for in the last month and what to pray for in the month ahead for The Joy Foundation.
Müllers
The vision of George Müller is still alive and active today as we continue to bring Christian hope and wholeness to children and young people. We achieve this through four key areas of work: inspiring faith, nurturing family, strengthening churches and transforming communities. Our work involves partnering with individuals, churches and charities in Bristol and beyond working in each of these four key areas, believing that that prayer works and actions matter.
The PACE Trust
Reach
Reach is a Christian charity with 20 years’ experience working with a variety of schools in the Reading area.
All our services are provided free of charge. We are funded through generous supporters from churches in Reading.
Our aim is to support schools by enabling young people and staff to reach their potential during school and in life beyond. We do this through:
Curriculum Support: We run full RE / PSHE lessons and assemblies to help students explore the Christian faith and life issues.
Pastoral Support: We run clubs, staff pitstops and student support to help staff and students cope with the pressures of school life.
We also aim to build a network of support in the community by linking schools with churches and Christians, as well as with other partners and service providers.
Our experienced team of workers and volunteers offer a wider range of support and resources that can be tailored for individual schools.
We have a large group of people who pray regularly for us and for the schools in Reading, and we send out regular updates and prayer requests to our supporters. We also help set up parents prayer groups in those schools and encourage our local churches to join us in praying for the young people we work with.
Spelthorne Schools’ Prayer Group
’26 not out!’ – that’s the number of years the Spelthorne Schools’ Prayer Group has been operating, having felt specifically directed to pray for the pre-schools and schools in our local community.
We currently pray for 5 pre-schools, 11 infant and junior schools, 5 senior schools and 3 local school-related organisations, meeting monthly during term time, alternating Friday mornings and evenings, usually in a home setting but occasionally in some of our schools. On receiving requests from each of the above we pray for the children, their families, all teaching and ancillary staff and any other school-related issues, giving our full assurance that all requests are treated in the strictest confidence. Each month we focus on a particular school-related topic and encourage the schools to use it as a basis for their requests. This current academic year topics have been New Beginnings, Friendships/Relationships, Mental Health Issues, Family Life, Leadership, Social Media and Celebration & Achievements, and we have invited guest speakers to a couple of our meetings to share their relevant expertise on specific topics. We also support our schools in practical ways – taking a morning per term at the pre-schools, assisting with fundraising for a school’s particular project, and annually donating Scripture Union publications to several infant and junior schools. We thank God for His faithfulness over the years, for the level of trust that has developed with the schools, His amazing answers to prayer, and recognize He is continuing to open doors of opportunity for encouraging all that there is tremendous power in prayer.
Spinnaker
Spinnaker’s vision is to inspire this generation of primary school children to engage with the Christian faith and explore its values. It is important to Spinnaker that we work in partnership and our aim is to equip and resource churches to enable them to get involved with their local schools.
Our team members talk passionately about their time in schools. They love what they do, they love the schools they visit and they love inspiring children. With wisdom and sensitivity to each school’s cultural ethos, assemblies and lessons are delivered with humility and inclusiveness, as we explore the stories in the Bible and how they can help our everyday lives. We create space for school children to think through for themselves some of the big questions about God, whether He is there and what He is like.
We hold a Prayer Fortnight every year to coincide with Pray for Schools – to find out more information and access resources as they become available, visit our website.
Sutton Schools Work
Sutton Schoolswork is a Christian Charity that is passionate about supporting students in Sutton to understand and explore Christianity and to develop spiritually, morally and socially.
Within the London Borough of Sutton there are 45 Primary schools and 15 Secondary schools and we aim to support all those schools in a variety of ways through Assemblies, RE lessons, Conferences, iwonder spaces, Clubs, Christian Unions, Easter production, Discover Christmas workshops, and Transition to Secondary school workshops.
All of this is achieved not just through our Schools Workers and their volunteers but also with the support of churches and their Children and Youth workers.
All our work is underpinned by prayer and every month we send out our monthly prayer update listing all the events in the month ahead and requests for prayer from our Schoolsworkers. We also have a termly prayer meeting where we gather to pray for children and young people in the borough.
South West Youth Ministries
South West Youth Ministries (SWYM) vision and passion is that every child and young person in the South West would encounter Jesus, know him, and make a choice to live for more.
As we work and pray towards this vision, our main strategy is to place trainee children and youth workers with churches, local ministries and schoolswork projects throughout the region. We also resource local churches with training events, residentials and leadership development opportunities for young people.
SWYM work with local partners to put positive Christian role models wherever children and young people are. We want to reach out to those who don’t know Jesus and share the love of God with them. We also want to see young people become Christians and then encourage them to be a shining light where they are.
Youthscape
Youthscape is a Christian charity passionate about seeing positive transformation for all young people. Our vision is to see the landscape change for every young person in the UK beginning with those where we have been based for the last 25 years, in Luton.
Ultimately we want to see all churches inspired and equipped with everything they need to see transformation in the lives of the young people in their community. At the heart of our work is Bute Mills, our pioneering Luton hub where we meet young people in schools, churches and the community.
Research and innovation are core values as we seek to understand youth culture, enabling us to develop new resources and models of youth work and refine established approaches because a rapidly changing culture demands innovative thinking and practice. We then share what works nationally through events, training, consultancy and resources.
YoYo Trust
York Schools and Youth Trust (YoYo) is a non-denominational charity which seeks to “bring the Christian faith alive” to the children and young people of York. Established in 1996, we are currently celebrating our 25th anniversary. We have a team of 6 schools’ workers and over 30 volunteers (from 18 churches) who work with and visit schools across the city. We are committed to encouraging people to pray for schools and hold regular prayer meetings.
Our vision is that, during their school years, every child and young person in York sees and hears the Christian faith communicated by Christians in creative and understandable ways. We do this by supporting the delivery of the RE curriculum leading collective worship (assemblies) and ‘reflective prayer space’ sessions; and running regular lunch clubs for Christian pupils and those interested in finding out more. We also offer a range of free online resources.