The work at the Copleston Centre is impressive. There's a Community Nursery, with a really exciting outdoor play area. Then there's the toy library, the work with those with mental health issues, the advice centre, after school club, new work with the 8-13's, a twice weekly youth club and the drop in for Asylum seekers - the list is seemingly endless.

Gillian Reeve is a small wiry woman who doesn't sit still for very long - ever - well at least that's the impression I got when I met her. Her life is one of commitment to causes in which she believes - proof (if it were ever needed) that lay people have so much to offer the Church and a role model for all of us who seek to live a practical faith related to today's world.

Co-ordinator of the Copleston Centre for the last twelve years and about to leave their payroll, she can look back on a lot of different activities and projects in her time there.

Although Gillian was born and brought up in South London, she came back to Peckham via Geneva, Liverpool and Bradford to name just a few of the places where she has lived, studied and worked. She studied at the French Institute and landed up in the Inter Church Aid section of the World Council of Churches in Geneva where she worked in administration with a project that had contact with very ordinary people from Eastern Europe. She speaks of this time as a rich experience in which she learned much and which moulded her subsequent development and work.

"What can one do..."

Here, she learned about collegiate working, valuing everyone's contribution, the importance of the interlink between political and social action, wanting not just to help people but to work to help to change the circumstances which cause them to be in need of help. She describes her motivation, which grew out of her time in Geneva, as asking the question 'What can one do together to help make life better for everybody'? Working there for most of the 1960's, she came back to Britain and undertook social work training at the Josephine Butler College in Liverpool. Here, as part of the course she also studied theology and earned the right to be a licensed lay worker.

She worked in Liverpool as a youth worker before going to St Catherine's, Hatcham, where a 'different relationship was developing between the Church and the community'. St Catherine's has continued to be the place where she has made her home and where she is an honorary member of the staff group. The support of St Catherine's has been crucial in enabling Gillian to undertake many of the other things that she has done. A stint at Rochester WelCare followed. Then onto the Lady Margaret Hall Settlement in Lambeth for four years - 'really hard work with lots of strong politics', she says. The Open Door philosophy of the settlement movement, where people come and receive as themselves has stayed with her ever since.

Feeling the need for some time a little back from the front line she went and did a Masters degree in Social and Community work in Bradford. Gillian describes this as a rich time because many of the students were from other parts of the world and the privilege of learning and sharing with them and developing long lasting friendships is one which she very much values.

Gillian says that the Copleston Centre is fascinating place, 'where people come for a whole range of reasons and with a huge breadth of backgrounds'.

"...the buzz of people"

Asking about the greatest achievement during her time at the Copleston Centre I was told simply that it is still there and the work continues. She will miss most, she says, 'the buzz of people and learning from them'. But, I sense that she won't lose the buzz of people altogether. She may be giving up work at the Copleston Centre but people like Gillian who daily live out their faith in the sharpest of places do not really give up work - ever. So, Gillian wants to more space to help with an under 5s project with which she has long been involved in Peckham, which 'has the potential to succeed but needs a lot of work'. For the last few years Gillian has been a tutor on the OLM course and 'retirement' will be an opportunity to also give this more time. She wants to spend more time on the asylum seekers project with which she has been involved since the '90s.

So there is still a major meeting place at the Copleston Centre but Gillian is taking this experience out further into the community in the hope that other groups of people can meet, learn from each other and begin to change their lives, even if this seems to take time to happen.