As many of you know Becky and Shelley Joyce tirelessly run Homeless Street Angels. The main fundraising goal is to one day open a day centre for the homeless in memory of their sister Abi and name it Abi House. At the day centre they hope to be able to bring together services, provide life lessons (such as cooking and washing), a place to take a shower and get clean, and a warm drink and someone to talk to, as well as much more. 

March 12th is Abi’s birthday so to raise even more money to help to working towards this goal Becky and her best friend Helen Williams-Taylor decided they were going to jump out of plane at 7.5 thousand feet. 

Facing her fears to raise money, a couple of years ago Becky did a sponsored shark dive and jumped in a tank filled with sharks all in the name of Homeless Street Angels. So the next fear to face was heights! 

So the girls took to the skies and faced their fears! After coming down they both had very different reactions… Becky said she has faced her fears but will never do it again, whereas Helen was ready to go back up, jump again and from even higher the next time!

Becky and Helen for weeks before the jump were sharing their donation pages to raise as much money for Homeless Street Angels.

After all the amazing donations on the go fund me and just giving page, on homeless street angels website and in cash they managed to raise a huge…

£ 6,866 !!!

This amazing amount of money will be a huge step closer to our goal of opening Abi House and being able to help the Homeless even more!

If you would like to make a donation to Homeless Street Angels or you want to find out any more on what we do visit www.homelessstreetangels.co.uk 

So this past year has been unlike any other! The streets were deserted, no one was allowed to mix or meet. A desperately sad and lonely time for many families, struggling like they never have before. Most of our guys were put into hotels and hostels by the council. We have had to adapt what we do but we were determined, we wouldn’t stop and we would continue even more to help those that needed our help. Our first step was to create a food bank as so many were struggling to feed themselves and their families in their homes.

So many people came on board to help, and we are so grateful to everyone who helped not only donate but also help deliver the food parcels every week. We have had hundreds of food donations from people putting up collection drop-off boxes outside their houses to stores also doing collections for us and all is this has kept us going through with food parcels throughout the year. We now have over 100 needy families and guys on our books!

For around the first six months of lockdown we were making weekly snack packs for the homeless living in the hotels. We were making nearly 200 snacks packs each week! Whilst doing this we were also supporting the homeless living in B&Bs giving them clothes, snacks, and hot meals each week.

Slowly but surely, we have started to resume our outreach on the streets of Leeds! We were lucky enough to be able to go out at easter time and make sure all of our guys had easter eggs. We also sent lots of easter eggs and treats out to the homeless still staying in the hotels and B&Bs.

We are now almost back to full force on the streets! Although it is great to be back out with the guys that we support, it is also very sad to see how many of our regulars have slipped back through the net and deteriorated in the time throughout lockdown. We also see a lot of new faces now out on the streets due to the lockdown. Family and relationship breakdowns, mental health etc. have effected everyone, but all we can do now is carry on doing what we do and hopefully  few more lives can be saved!

We are so very proud of our amazing team that have carried on throughout these terrible times, one way or another! We are happy to say we are all nearly back in full force and all back together again!

We help the homeless throughout the year but Christmas is a particularly hard time for our homeless friends. As they are sat on the cold ground watching everyone buying their loved ones gifts it can make them feel even lower.

This is why we try to make Christmas an extra special time of the year and pull out all the stops to ensure they feel loved.

So as you know we had a Santa sack appeal and collected gifts, wrapped them and bagged them up in Santa sacks ready to take out and deliver to our homeless friends. The Santa sack appeal was a huge success, raising nearly a thousand pounds!

On Christmas eve we headed to the streets of Leeds to hand out the presents to all our homeless friends and also give them a hot Christmas dinner.

On Christmas morning one of our amazing volunteers was up at the crack of dawn to start cooking lots of breakfast sandwiches to take out to our homeless guys. Along with a small team of our volunteers, she set off with sandwiches and hot drinks to warm the homeless up on Christmas day morning!

Our homeless friends were so happy to wake up to a hot sandwich and lots of goodies!

We would like to say a special thanks to Stoneacre Properties for a donation of £1000 and hundreds of chocolates -we managed to share a lot with the children’s wards and St Gemmas hospice!

Helping our friends at Christmas is very important to us and we want to make it as special as we can for them! However, being homeless doesn’t just happen at Christmas, we help them all year round and count on the generous donations of the public to ensure we can keep helping our homeless friends!

Last year at Christmas time we put together Santa sacks full of presents for our homeless friends to open on Christmas Eve.  They were full of essentials such as toiletries, hand warmers, underwear and lots more, all individually wrapped so they had lots of presents to wake up to.

On Christmas Eve, many volunteers turned up to hand out the presents to our homeless friends. Armed with their Santa sacks they hit the streets of Leeds city centre to spread Christmas cheer. It’s a very hard time of year for our friends on the streets and we want to make it a little bit easier for them. It’s important to us that we make this time of year special for our homeless friends, so they can feel less alone and know that someone cares.

This year we plan on doing the same thing to ensure our homeless friends have another special Christmas. We are going to be taking Santa sacks full with presents and essentials to gift to our friends on the streets, but we need help! The only way we can continue the amazing work we do for the homeless is through donations and this time is no different.

To be able to make this festive time of year special we will be relying on amazing and generous donations. While you’re doing your Christmas shopping think of the homeless men, women and dogs and maybe pick up an extra gift set or box of chocolates to donate for the homeless. A small gift like these can make someone’s Christmas feel so much better. Knowing that someone has thought about them at this time of year can make our friends feel as though they are cared about and are not alone.
Please if you are able to donate, donate. Below is a list of just a few things that would be great donations. For those that may be unable to buy gifts, we are also doing sponsor a Santa sack, for £25 each it will consist of a Santa sack with gift-wrapped presents and essentials with a personalised gift tag – for our guys on the streets that have furry companions we are also doing doggie sacks at £15 each and are appealing for dog toys and treats. Please give what you can, and thank you in advance.