help

My last night in New Union Street was a peaceful one and I slept very well, accompanied by Nancy who had come over from Birmingham. It was good to get some media coverage yesterday on Touch Radio and today on BBC Coventry and Warwickshire. There was also a piece in the Telegraph headed 'Penny comes in from the cold for meeting' which advertised the meeting tomorrow - Saturday at 9am at the Friends Meeting House, Hill Street, - when hopefully we will have lots of people who want to do something about homelessness. I'll report back about the meeting in my final blog tomorrow.

It will be a fitting day to finish on the anniversary of Coventry Blitz, reminding us that war destroys homes, people, families and communities. I have done this sleep out during the Peace Festival because of the connection with homelessness and war and refugees and at a more local level the injustice of poverty. I am concerned at the rising levels of homelessness - in Coventry and worldwide. I am concerned that it has almost become acceptable to think that some people somehow don't deserve a home - and the right to work and marry; that if they are homeless they must have done something wrong. I am concerned that refugees the world over are being prevented from starting a proper life again after the trauma of war. It is almost as if there is a perception that there are too many people in the world and so inevitably they can't all be part of society - that there is not enough room.

But there is enough room and we all matter. We all have something to offer the world and when things are going well for us we can think about those who may need some temporary help. We all need a bit of help sometimes. Closing our eyes to poverty and destitution makes us less human. I do not have the answers. I am doing what small things I can do and I am sure that if we think about this together we will be able to make progress and lessen poverty and destitution and change the processes which cause it. And we will all benefit.