Praying for Dagenham
| Published: 13th August 2008 16:21 |
St Elisabeth's Church in Wood Lane, Dagenham held a prayer meeting in response to the amount of gun and knife crime in London on Wednesday 13th August, between 7 and 10pm.
The event was an open invitation to anyone to join together and pray for an end to knife crime in London. The local vicar, Reverend Steven Hanna, has been central to getting people to sign an anti-knife crime petition launched with the council and Dagenham Post. It calls for a legal loophole to be changed to prevent children from getting hold of knives from shops.
The petition now stands at over two thousand signatures and will be available on the night for those attending to sign.
Last week a petition of nearly one thousand five hundred signatures was handed into Barking and Dagenham Council, with hundreds more people now set to sign and join the campaign.
The London Prayer Relay for Peace reaches Dagenham 
The night was part of a wider campaign across London's 33 boroughs called the Prayer for Peace relay. The Prayer for Peace relay has been introduced as the church's response to the wave of gun and knife crime sweeping through the capital. It began at the start of August and will continue until September.
Christians came from many other Dagenham churches to pray for the young people of the borough. Their prayers were focused on the restoration of family life, as an alternative to the gang culture, and also for inspired leadership in local government and voluntary youth organisations to encourage young people to develop self-respect and a sense of worth in their lives.
Other prayers were for the emergency services, and hospital staff, who have to deal with the effects gun and knife crime.
A Street Pastor explained the work being done in Chadwell Heath, and the Parsloes Park area of Dagenham, to reach out to young people. He said that these youngsters did not feel able to use the many facilities open to them as it meant going into other parts of Dagenham where they felt threatened.
