Latest News

A New Arrival!

We at head office are thrilled to announce that Marina our Marketing Manager had a happy delivery of  healthy, beautiful baby girl, a little earlier than planned, on Christmas Day! She was born weighing 6.5lbs and they have named her Poppy.

Photo courtesy of Marianne Taylor Photography

A Visit To Our Ukraine Friends

Anne McLaren is our dedicated Port Chaplain in Hull. Hull is unusual in that Russian and Ukrainian seafarers make up 40% of those visiting the port, mainly because of the sort of cargo they are carrying such as coal and timber from the Baltic. Communication with seafarers can sometimes be difficult so when Anne heard that her sons were learning Russian at school, she approached their school and joined their classes. The teacher there is from the Ukraine, where they also speak Russian in addition to the official language of Ukrainian.

             After Christmas, Anne joined the school trip to the country to assist her language development and to learn more about the culture and traditions.  Seafarers can often suffer from depression and loneliness, missing their own homes, families and way of life so it helps Anne enormously to understand how their lifestyle. During her stay she had the opportunity to visit Kiev several times and was delighted to be able to witness the celebration of the Orthodox Christmas on 6th January at St Vladimir’s Cathedral, which is the mother cathedral of the Ukraine Orthodox Church.  Anne’s experience in the Ukraine enriched her culturally and spiritually and she hopes that her Russian language skills will enhance her ministry to seafarers in Hull.

AoS supports World Fisheries Day

World Fisheries day is celebrated every year on November 21 throughout the world by the fisherfolk communities. Fishing communities worldwide celebrate this day through rallies, workshops, public meetings, cultural programs, dramas, exhibition, music show, and demonstrations to highlight the importance of maintaining the world's fisheries.

The World Fisheries Day helps in highlighting the critical importance to human lives, of water and the lives it sustains, both in and out of water. Water forms a continuum, whether contained in rivers, lakes, and ocean.

Fish forms an important part of the diets of people around the world, particularly those that live near rivers, coasts and other water bodies. A number of traditional societies and communities are rallied around the occupation of fishing.

But this proximity has also lead to severe ocean and coastal pollution from run-off and from domestic and industrial acticities carried out near-by. This has led to depletion of fish stocks in the immediate vicinity, requiring fishermen to fish farther and farther away from their traditional grounds. Besides, overfishing and mechanization has also resulted in a crisis - fish stocks are being depleted through 'factory' vessels, bottom trawling, and other means of unsustainable fishing methods.

Unless we address these issues collectively, the crisis will deepen. The World Fisheries Day helps to highlight these problems, and moves towards finding solutions to the increasingly inter-connected problems we are facing, and in the longer term, to sustainable means of maintaining fish stocks. Data kindly sourced from the Global Development Research Centre

AoS is heavily involved with supporting fishing vessels, in Scotland particularly there is a large population of fishing vessels usually manned by Filipino or Ghanian crew. Aos chaplains and volunteer ship visitors visit these crews as they do other cargo ships and provide for their practical and pastoral care. AoS supports the world Fishery legislation and is supporting fishing communities.

Volunteer of the Year Award

We are happy to announce that the 2009 volunteer of the year award was awarded to John Robinson from the port of Southampton.

The award was presented to Roger just before the Annual National Service for Seafarers, at a special tea party attended by Mrs Cherie Blair, who personally presented the award. John Robinson won a framed icon of our patron saint Stella Maris and four tickets for a flight on the London Eye. John has been a tireless ship visitor for many years, and he has an active presence at all volunteering events. He said “I was shocked and pleased to win this award, I really as not expecting it, I was just happy and grateful to be invited to the tea party, this is a pleasant shock.” 

The response to the award this year was exceptional and we would like to thank everyone who took the time to nominate themselves or their fellow volunteers. We hope to run this again, so please do enter again in the future and you could be a winner.