We are proud to serve nutritious vegetarian food year round.
Thanks to feedback from our service users and conversations with partnership organisations, we are aware of an increase in financial hardship and the current need for people on low/no income for free nutritional meals in their community.
Each of our bi-weekly session is attended by up to 140 people.16% are currently sleeping rough and 66% have been homeless in the last 5 years. 66% of our service users are on benefits and a lot of them survive without any income at all, and 61% have a long-term illness or disability.
We offer a free substantial vegetarian meal as well as clothes, showers, laundry and haircuts. We enjoy a great deal of support from local businesses and the community: 95% of the food we serve is cooked using food surplus and donations from our local community.
Our service users appreciate the availability of healthy twice a week as it helps them manage on low incomes, going some way towards meeting their nutritional needs. The regularity of the sessions is particularly important in overcoming social exclusion for people with mental health issues. About half of our service users report struggling with mental health issues. During our Service Users Forum, people have explained the importance of sitting around tables and socialising at our drop-in. Many mentioned feeling very lonely.
All our meals are cooked from scratch using donated fruit and vegetable from Growing Communities. We also receive regular food donations from our local community.
