Street Pastors to Tackle Anti-Social Behaviour in Portsmouth

|PIC1|A ministry of Christian volunteers who demonstrate God's unconditional love by patrolling outside pubs and clubs to offer help to vulnerable revellers is ready to hit Portsmouth and make its streets safer at night.

Church leaders from St Simon's, Southsea, the Oasis Centre, Portsmouth Christian Fellowship, The Salvation Army and Kings Church, spent a year preparing to bring the Street Pastors ministry to Portsmouth.

They have now appointed a Street Pastors co-ordinator, Elly Mulvany, who will be based at the Oasis Centre on Arundel Street when the project gets into full swing this summer.

Street Pastors is a national initiative that started in Brixton in 2003 as a Christian response to rising levels of late-night street crime. It now has teams in 10 different London boroughs, as well as Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Halifax and other cities across the UK.

The project has proved a massive success in tackling night time anti-social behaviour, as churches, the police and local authorities continue to work in close partnership on the project.

"The vision is to take God's unconditional love onto the streets," said Mulvany. "Street pastors are easily identifiable and young people are often interested in why they are doing it - and are especially impressed that they aren't paid. People are often quite emotional if they have been drinking, and may be quite vulnerable.

Teams of four will head out into Portsmouth's clubbing districts each wearing jackets and baseball caps emblazoned with reflective 'Street Pastor' labels. The teams will complement existing patrols of police officers between 10pm and 4am every Friday night.

"We'll offer practical assistance such as making sure they get home, cleaning them up if there's been a fight, or intervening to make sure an argument doesn't escalate," said Mulvany.

"If appropriate, we might offer to pray with them there and then, or they can write a request down for us to pray for later. But the aim isn't to preach at anyone. The national statistics show that it makes the streets safer.

"It's all about building relationships and getting alongside people. We'll be talking to pub landlords and nightclub managers during the day, and bouncers on the night. And it has the enthusiastic support of local police officers."

Portsmouth Street Pastors is one of more than 200 projects launched across south-east Hampshire and the Isle of Wight since July 2005 as part of the Anglican Bishop of Portsmouth's 'Kairos' initiative . The Kairos process aimed to help churches find ways of serving their local communities more effectively.