VES Team End of Week Update | Spotlight on the Contributory Principle

Dear wonderful VES team,

Hope you are well - and thank you for a really good week starting back together after half term!

Spotlight this week: The Contributory Principle

One of the most encouraging things this week has been seeing more people connected to VES step into volunteering and helping roles.

A lovely recent example: two new volunteers are adult children of VES students. They speak excellent English, so they don’t need our classes themselves, but they have chosen to come and serve the community through children’s work and administration. That is amazing.

Jon Kuhrt, our first ever Welcoming Well speaker, writes helpfully about what he calls “the contributory principle”: the idea that everyone can do something for others. He warns that “too much Christian social action has become a one-way exchange where armies of well-meaning middle-class people distribute resources which can deepen dependency and disempower people. We have to avoid inadvertently digging a bigger hole for the people we seek to serve.” That is an important challenge and his post on the wider principle is worth reading in full - https://gracetruth.blog/2025/10/26/the-contributory-principle-everyone-can-do-something-for-others/.

At VES, we absolutely want to serve people well. But we never want this to become a one-way exchange where one group are always the “helpers” and another group are only ever the “helped”. We're at our best when people are not just welcomed into the room, but actually drawn into community; not just helped to learn English, but trusted to serve others; not just signposted, but becoming signposts themselves. We rejoice in it - because that is where so much of the transformation we're seeing actually happens!

Key dates — please note

Refugee Week Lunch — Tuesday 16th June, we’ll be sharing lunch together after classes as part of Refugee Week. More details to follow, but please do save the date and stay / come if you can.

Natasha Irons MP visit — Thursday 25th June . This is now slated for Thursday 25th June. As ever with MP diary visits, it may be subject to last-minute changes, but it will be an encouraging opportunity to show what is happening at VES.

Last day of term — Thursday 16th July. Our final day of term will be Thursday 16th July. We’ll share more details about the shape of the final week nearer the time.

VES Dashboard — Shorter Week at a Glance

● 14 classes delivered across 3 days
● Plus 2 creche sessions and 1 youth drop-in
● 166 student sessions enabled
● 49 team sessions given
● Weekly participation number: 262
● +86% increase on this time last year

Behind each of those numbers is a person being welcomed, taught, encouraged, and helped to take good next steps.

Thank you again for all you pour into this ministry! Have a great weekend, and much love,

Andy Brims

https://www.vineyardenglishschool.org.uk/team-updates