Project Antifreeze has been a lifeline to many men and women over the past thirteen years. The project works five nights a week during the winter months, and offers three nights a week during the rest of the year. Our calling is to serve the needs of those who are rough sleeping or inadequately housed in the Brighton & Hove area.
Each winter weeknight our team of dedicated outreach volunteers go out onto the streets of our city and minister directly to the needs of those we meet. We give out a Street Sheet which gives information as to where men and women can receive help such information as the day centres, health care information, housing and accommodation advice, etc. In a practical way we offer to each person we meet a warm drink and a sandwich, a few clothes and toiletries, and where one is required an emergency sleeping bag to ease the burden of sleeping rough, but most importantly we offer our time to sit and listen.
Over the years that Antifreeze has been in operation our volunteers can have seen and heard first-hand the many frustrations that men and women feel about their situations and their difficulties. During a typical evening we will receive requests to pray or remember privately in prayer some of the things people have shared with us.
We also work closely with other agencies across the city of Brighton & Hove, here are just a couple of comments made about our work from those we work alongside.
“To say that these projects are a lifesaver is not an exaggeration, the team engage with extremely vulnerable people, providing essentials to keep them alive, with this they give a touch of humanity that has been lacking in so many people’s lives”. The Big Issue.
“We have valued the excellent work and support given to the homeless people across the city by Project Antifreeze”. Hove YMCA.
It’s always pleasing when those who in the past we have had a direct input on at street level come through and find accommodation, sustain treatment and begin to move forward. We have been blessed recently with a few men and women who have joined us as volunteers who at one time were recipients of Antifreeze and who now have a burden to share their testimonies as to how through the nightly support of Antifreeze they have managed to come through and offer their love and experiences to others who are in such need.
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