St Oswald’ s Stall at Castlemilk Fun Day
St Oswald’ s Church and its Men’ s Shed and Cherish Programme were represented at Castlemilk Fun Day on Saturday, 11 th June. Myself and volunteer Sean Scally manned the St Oswald’ s stall at this busy, vibrant event.
It was clear from the off that this was going to be a loud, energetic kind of day. As we set up the stall, local guitar band“ Ned Zeppelin” blasted through their sound check. Loud rock music at 10 am on a Saturday morning isn’ t everyone’ s cup of tea, but it got the adrenaline going.
We had lots of gifts( kindly donated by St Oswald’ s congregation) to give away and used these as a way to draw people in to conversation. We also used them to reward people who took part in our“ Wee Referendum”.
This was a quick bit of research to find out a Men’ s Shed would be viable in this area. The poll simply asked people;“ Is there enough for men to do in this area?” Voting was carried out by dropping a counter into the“ Yes” or“ No” boxes on our stall. The result? 57 people thought that there was not enough for men to do versus 13 who thought there was. Or, 81 % thought there should be more for men, whilst only 19 % thought things were OK.
As well as the wrapped“ mystery” gifts we had a lucky dip for kids( unwrapped gifts in a big bag). This resulted in the same wee gang making multiple trips to our stall in ever-increasing numbers as word got around!( Some grown-ups departed from the“ lucky-dip” spirit to have a right good rummage around in the bag until they found a gift they liked) We gave away copies of the church magazine, leaflets about the“ Cherish” Programme & Banner Workshops run by Linda Hardie and displayed photos of the banners.
Our stall included some old woodwork tools and items turned from wood. This drew in some older men who recognised the tools and could tell us what they were for. A young boy of about 9 yrs old showed a great interest in the woodworking stuff, so was gave him a sycamore bowl to take home.
8 local men signed up to register their interest and hopefully attend our Men’ s Shed group meetings. Several local workers & politicians liked our idea and a nice“ Community Champion” lady called Elizabeth from ASDA told us we could apply to them for a grant.
StOM Page 9