OUR STORY

The History of The Shed
 Rev Tommy MacNeil

I’m often asked the question, where did The Shed Project come from? The answer is two fold. Back in 2006 when I came to be the minster of Martin’s Memorial, we organised our first Christmas Giving Tree initiative. The idea behind this was that we would partner with local agencies (Alcohol and Drug Support, Homelessness, Social Work, Hebrides Alpha, Women’s Aid, etc) in getting basic information about individuals and families they were working with. We would then pin these details on a Christmas Tree in our church and invite our church family to take away one of the slips of paper with the details and return them to the church with Christmas gifts they had bought. We would then deliver the gifts to the agencies who would distribute them to their service users. In the first year we gave our over 90 gifts. In 2020 it was over 160. So in the 15 years that we’ve ran this we’ve given away close to 2000 gifts to people in our community. A simple way of us expressing our love to people. At the same time, it was an important step in opening the eyes of the people in our church to see that there were people in our community who faced challenges and had real needs. And that we could all do our little bit in helping meet some of these needs.