Food Distribution Project

We were successful in raising funds to provide ready cooked hot food to needy families and individuals and the delivery of the projects helped us to understand that food poverty exists in the area we serve and even though we might see the back of the pandemic soon but this need for providing food will remain with us for a very long time. We have extensive experience of organising community dinners and food distribution service with links to local caterers meeting our food hygiene requirements. Through this project we have delivered food to families, individuals, unemployed, frail and elderly, people living on their own without any outside contacts, victims of domestic violence, refugees with no recourse to public funds, victims of evictions, people with long term illness etc. The list is endless.

Tesco Bags of Help Grant

Pre-pandemic, the Tesco Bags of Help grant was used to host a grand community dinner in the Royal Borough of Greenwich. However, during pandemic another grant for food and grocery delivery to the needy community members has helped us enormously in many ways. The project provided us with the opportunity to be one of many other charities and faith groups who have responded to the need of the community to provide food in this very difficult pandemic situation. It highlighted that food insecurity is a long-term problem and the Covid-19 pandemic brought this to the fore for public attention. As our project progressed we came across many heart-breaking stories and made our resolve even stronger that there is a need to find sustainable solutions to address this problem of food insecurity in local communities.

Groundwork Grant

The impact of this grant on one of our chosen themes of food delivery has been phenomenal. As we delivered our project many issues unfolded. Vulnerable clients suffered the most as the pandemic created deep anxiety and unpredictability. Loneliness and loss of income caused severe stress and mental health problems and many suffered collectively. In the absence of mainstream services particularly to the BAME and Asian Community, our Centre has embarked on a mission to deal with the needs of the community that are paramount and food delivery is one of them. The challenges in delivering food delivery project for this grant were many. However, we managed to meet every challenge with our long and vast experience of delivering projects and through our well-established links and contacts. The main challenge was the choice of a caterer who will meet our requirements: to deliver food at short notice & cover all the areas to reach all our clients, with kitchen meeting the local authority hygiene standards, provides a variety of nutritious food, caters the dietary and faith requirements, delivers a good portion, adheres to the Covid-19 safety requirements, delivery staff are friendly & caring to deal with our clients particularly the frail and elderly. Based on the recommendations from our links and contacts we zeroed in on local caterer. Thankfully, the services provided were excellent and we received very positive feedback. Some clients, even recommended the caterer to their friends. As we progressed with the project we realised that clients need other support as well. Meeting or finding the solutions to the needs of the clients caused due to the pandemic was our other challenge. We tried our best and where possible provided the much-needed support by sign-posting and seeking the help of other agencies particularly in the fields of housing, finding GP support, providing interpreter services etc.

London Response Grant

This grant helped us to continue with our food distribution project and also helped us to prepare ourselves to deal with different scenarios and make our centre into training and service hub in the area. We want to come out of the Covid-19 in the right way serving the community as before with lessons learnt during the pandemic.

Arnold Clark Community Fund

This grant is helping us to continue with our food distribution project back to back and the second grant is helping us not only to distribute food but also to provide food lunches at our new venue. The Arnold Clark Community Fund is helping elderly residents to meet the cost of living crisis.

Together for London (London Community Fund)

We now run our Community Sewing/Textiles project on Tuesdays and Community Craft Skills project on Wednesdays. Members start the session with keep fit exercise, followed by lunch and the project. The Together for London grant will help our Centre to run all our projects including the food distribution and Tuesday/Wednesday lunches.

About the Food Distribution Project

"We received many positive feedbacks and couple of negative feedbacks as well".

“Food was great, may God bless you with health and happiness”.

“Never tasted food like this before. Recommending the caterer to my friends”.

“Thanks so much for the food. Very nice of you. God bless”.

“Beautifully done, very good. Use my name as a reference”.

“Very mild, not spicy enough”.

“Have to wait for delivery. Once delivered, all family enjoyed the food”.