Volunteer blog - week 2 - The heart of Restore

Hi Everyone. I'm Emma and I’ve been volunteering with Restore for about 10 years. 

As I work full time, my role with Restore has mainly been part of the evening outreach team. Outreach takes place in Normanton every Thursday evening and is typically Restore’s first point of contact with women working ‘on street’. 

Unsurprisingly, many of these women find it hard to trust people. So, outreach is about meeting them where they are, listening to them and giving them a hot drink, toiletries, etc. This allows us to build relationship with the women over a number of weeks and months, in the hope they’ll eventually allow us to support them in a more meaningful way with the various issues they face. 

When people hear about the work we do, one of the first questions is often how successful we are at helping women to exit prostitution. If we purely looked at the proportion of women who've exited as a result of Restore, the percentage would probably be lower than you'd expect. This is mainly because the cycle of drug addictions, often combined with controlling partners, is immensely powerful. However, if you asked how many women we've shown love, kindness, care, support, practical help, etc. to then it would be hundreds. Given these women's lives are full of people who want to abuse and take from them, giving food, drink, a listening ear and an encouraging word is a ray of light in a very dark evening. And if one of those women were my Mother, Daughter or Sister I would desperately want someone to show them this love and care.

So, I urge you to pray for Restore, that God will continue to use us to share his love and hope with these women. 

Emma xx