those at the other colleges, were able to study for its certificates in education, youth and community work, and religious education. Fircroft College (1909), influenced by the Danish Folk High Schools, was founded as a residential college for working men, to broaden their outlook and to increase their self-confidence. It maintained close links with UK trade unions, and the Workers Educational Association. Attracted by Kingsmead, three Free Church mission agencies (Baptist, Congregationalist and Presbyterian) jointly founded Carey Hall (1912) as a training college for women missionaries. The Federation In 1919 the controlling bodies of these five colleges agreed to work together, and to establish a Central Council. They differed in style and ethos, each was independently organised, but all were Christian in inspiration with interests in: education as personal development and preparation for service rather than for academic qualifications and professional advancement - lay Christianity in Woodbrooke, Sunday school teaching in Westhill, citizenship in Fircroft; the training of teachers - for Church-related education in Westhill; this concern was shared by the missionary colleges; theology studied ecumenically by ordinary Christians, mostly lay, as an academic subject but also within the context of Christian commitment; social studies - students who chose to do so could work for internally awarded certificates or diplomas, or a University of Birmingham Social Studies Diploma; the wider world. There was an international dimension in all the colleges, not merely because many students were expecting to work overseas but also because many came from overseas, unusual in the Britain of that time. In 1923 the Anglican SPG Society for the Propagation of the Gospel founded the College of the Ascension initially for the training of women missionaries, and in 1926 the Young Women's Christian Association established the YWCA College. In 1925 Fircroft produced a rural offshoot, Avoncroft, on a site in the Worcestershire countryside, about 12 miles from Selly Oak. The creation of Crowther Hall in 1969 by the Church Missionary Society meant that all the major Protestant missionary societies, including both high church and low church Anglicanism were on the site. Prospect Hall was created in 1978 to assist in the rehabilitation of people with disabilities. By the end of the 1970s Carey Hall had become St Andrew's Hall, and the YWCA College had moved to London. Overdale, the theological college of the Churches of Christ, joined the Federation in 1931; it closed when the United Reformed