We provide funding and other support for chaplaincy at a local high school. We also run a Friday breakfast club, serving pancakes and cereal to 40 or 50 students each week and providing a friendly place for students to chat with the chaplain or teachers.

Kids Hope is an early intervention, school-based mentoring program that has been operating in Australia since 2004. Ashburton Baptist has partnered with Kids Hope in a local primary school for many years.

The program aims to develop emotional and social resilience in children, and so enhance their capacity to learn. The model is built on a long-term partnership between a local school and a local church. Carefully screened and trained mentors from the church meet the children for one hour per week at the school.

Kids Hope is a registered ChildSafe program and aims to meet or exceed national mentoring benchmarks.

Ashburton Baptist’s Houses of Hope program provides secure transitional housing and a caring, supportive welcome to some of the most marginalised and vulnerable people in our community: asylum seekers. Since 2016 our church has, in partnership with Baptcare, set up and supported three houses for asylum seekers. Baptcare provides residents with professional casework support and a team of church volunteers helps connect residents to the local services they need for food and material support, schooling, healthcare and social connection.

Situated next to the church at 11 Marquis Street Ashburton, Elsie Salter House provides day respite care to people experiencing early dementia, enabling their at-home carer to take a break. The house was established by the Ashburton Baptist community in 1991 and operated directly by the church, through ABCSI, until 2007. Since then it has been run by Samarinda Aged Care Services, with ABCSI making the homely facilities and inviting garden available to Samarinda.

The Community Care Group has been operating for more than 50 years and co-ordinates projects that provide financial or other practical assistance for community needs. The generosity of church folk enables us to pack and distribute Christmas food hampers to 40 local needy families. We also continue the weekly Fill the Basket Appeal, providing our congregation with the opportunity to make food donations to be directed to local needy families – some of which is used to make up the Emergency Food Bags which are offered by our Pastors to people who present themselves at the Church seeking urgent assistance. A special effort in July also allows us to make up Winter Warmer hampers for local needy families.

To find out more, download the ABCSI Annual Report