Micah 2024 Projects

The Micah Fund is a way for people at Ps & Gs to give to charities and projects outside our church and beyond our usual partner organisations.

The Micah Fund supports projects in the UK which fall under one of the four areas of changing lives, transforming society, deepening influence and church planting, which are in line with Ps & Gs strategy. It also includes donations to Disaster Emergency Committee (DEC) appeals, ordinands who have been part of Ps & Gs, and short-term missions.

Thank you to everyone who gave to the Micah Fund in March, we reached our target and raised over £49,000.

The charities we are supporting this year are:

Edinburgh & St Andrews’ Student Worker - Just Love
Family Wellbeing Practitioner - Stepping Stones
Magnitude Festival 2024 - Scripture Union Scotland
New Hope Counselling Service - Friday Friends
Stories of Hope Packs in Prisons - Junction 42
Video Editor - Streams Studios

Find out more about the Micah Fund and charities we supported in previous years.

Just Love’s mission is to equip students and support graduates across the UK to pursue Christian justice with their whole lives. Just Love groups are communities of students who serve their communities through volunteering, fundraising, campaigning, prayer and learning.

Each university student group has a regional coordinator that directly supports 6-8 student leaders. Through coaching, training and resourcing the coordinators work to maximise their student’s growth, leadership development and long-term impact. When student leaders are invested in the groups are well led, meaning more students attend and benefit from learning about and delivering justice.

One coordinator looks after the Edinburgh and St Andrews groups where a total of 50-60 students will be regular attendees. As well as benefiting the individuals involved, the groups also impact the local community - strengthening local charities through volunteering as well as raising awareness and funds. In the future, hundreds of people will benefit from what our graduates go on to do over the rest of their lives having been set on that trajectory towards a whole life pursuit of justice.

The Micah fund donation will fund the Edinburgh & St Andrews’ Regional Coordinator for one year, empowering students to love Christian justice, contributing hundreds of volunteering hours and raising thousands of pounds for charities.

Read more about Just Love.

Stepping Stones provides a range of support services for families living in North Edinburgh – an area with some of the highest levels of poverty in the city.

The charity’s Family Wellbeing Practitioner provides intensive one to one support to young parent families (under the age of 26), where there is a child aged 5 or under. Approximately 15 young parents and 30 children are being supported annually by this post. Families can self-refer to the project, but there are also established pathways with health visitors, midwives and social workers that enable the charity to reach the most vulnerable families.

Both emotional support and help with practical challenges are provided through a mix of one-to-one support, group work and links to other community projects. The charity aims to create capacity for parents to be responsive and nurturing and increase their confidence in their parenting. They learn about what their child needs to thrive and are supported to create a safe and stable home environment.

The Micah fund donation will support 3 months of the Family Wellbeing Practitioner’s salary - helping families to become resilient and children experience the world as safe and secure.

Read more about Stepping Stones.

Scripture Union Scotland exists to inspire children and young people to know God and explore the difference Jesus can make in their lives.

In 2023 the Magnitude Festival enabled 1036 young people to encounter more of the magnitude of God: in his Word, in worship and in wonder at God’s creation. A volunteer team of 140 and 20 guest speakers delivered the teaching programme. 88 churches from across Scotland and denominations were represented at the event, demonstrating a powerful expression of Christian unity and togetherness. Feedback from the event affirmed that the ministry met young people’s spiritual needs in a very deep way.

For 2024 SU Scotland once again plans to run the festival, building on the event’s fantastic start in 2022 and amazing growth in 2023. The overall aim of the event is to change lives by encouraging young people to be secure in their identity in Christ and to go beyond mere knowledge of God. The event also invests in future Christian leaders by providing training and resources and has an evangelistic element with 55 young people making professions of faith at Magnitude 2023.

The Micah fund donation will help reduce the ticket price of the Magnitude event to help young people connect with other young Christians and become confident followers of Jesus.

Read more about Scripture Union Scotland and Magnitude

Friday Friends is a small charity providing support to people in Haddington, surrounding villages and the wider East Lothian area.

The charity offers the unconditional love of God and His people to those experiencing issues of drug and/or alcohol misuse and to those with related mental health issues, and their families.

The Covid pandemic is still having a disproportionate impact on disadvantaged families. This has led to an increase in mental health issues, domestic abuse and referrals to support services. This upsurge, and the impact of the cost-of-living crisis, led the charity’s New Hope Counselling Service to recently be expanded and offered to the wider community of Haddington and East Lothian.

Helping to shorten the often incredibly long wait for people seeking counselling, the service has seen the people they work with significantly improve their mental health and sense of self-worth and move away from destructive choices and behaviours.

Over the course of a year, the New Hope Counselling Service will work with approximately 12-15 individuals. This has a positive impact on not just them, but their families, friends and communities who all can become stronger, healthier and more resilient.

The Micah fund donation will help fund one year of the New Hope Counselling Service – helping individuals, their families and communities in East Lothian grow and thrive.

Junction 42 exists to see the lives of offenders and their communities transformed by the hope of the gospel.

The charity’s UK-wide Stories of Hope packs have been distributed to prisons across the UK. They are an in-cell faith pack which include a worship CD, prayer journal, testimony of someone with lived experience of prisons and a creative faith activity. The tool utilises tactile, auditory and visual learning and have proved useful for chaplains to have large scale impact in their prisons.

The success of the resource has led to the opportunity for further growth and development specifically in Scotland. The project will now develop a Stories of Hope Resource with Scottish case-studies and that meets local needs. To achieve this the team will develop stronger relationships with the 15 prison chaplaincies in Scotland to understand how they work, assess how they currently utilise the Stories of Hope resource and identify opportunities for further improvement, training and support. The team will also look to develop a more collaborative approach with community faith organisations working with ex-offenders such as Bethany Christian Trust.

The resource hopes to further empower the Scottish Prison Chaplaincy teams and therefore benefit 6500+ prisoners in Scotland to find faith, transform their lives and break often intergenerational offending cycles.

The Micah fund donation will support the development of the Scottish Stories of Hope packs and help prisoners find faith and transform their lives.

Read more about Junction 42

Streams Studio is a digital ministry platform that creates impactful short videos that are shared on social media platforms such as Instagram, TikTok & YouTube.

Based in Saint Church in Hackney, East London, the content created by the charity is designed to serve Christians in their 20s and 30s who are struggling in their faith. This is an under-served space between Christian material available that is overtly evangelistic and those designed for Christians who are thriving. Streams Studio aims to deliver a compelling message of hope, delivered accessibly into the spaces of deepest distraction online guiding viewers to explore more of the Christian faith or reignite lost beliefs.

In 2023 their videos reached over 5 million people and in 2024 the charity plan to multiply that significantly to 25-30 million through new partnerships and increased content. The platform currently has over 42,000 followers and their videos have been shared by high profile individuals such as Stormzy (3.3 million followers) and influencer Millie Mackintosh (1.3 million followers)

The video made with Sky TV presenter Simon Thomas has been viewed over 485,000 times. In this piece, Simon shared how he’s been able to cling on to his faith despite losing his wife to cancer within four days of being diagnosed. Simon Thomas' story.

The Micah fund donation will fund an additional 3 days a week for the video editor to generate new content that provides messages of hope and reignites curiosity and people’s attention towards Jesus.

Read more about Streams Studio.