Lidl Camden

We are a poverty alleviation and community empowerment nonprofit promoting equitable access to food, housing, healthcare, education, and an adequate standard of living for individuals and families. We work with various segments of the community including homeless people, refugees, rough sleepers, and individuals and families living in extreme poverty. Refuge Network runs a soup kitchen at Charing Cross. We also operate several outreach programmes providing food and survival packs in various locations, including Victoria, Leicester Square, Brixton, Camden, Clapham, London Bridge, Waterloo, and Goodge Street. We provide food, clothing, tents, sleeping bags, phones, survival kits, other material supplies, and advice to the homeless, refugees, struggling individuals, and families living in poverty. Due to the cost of living crisis, our service is receiving unprecedented requests for assistance. We are seeing more suffering on the streets and can feel the urgency of the situation. A visitor to our soup kitchen told us he was finding it difficult to remain on his feet due to hunger. It was heartbreaking seeing him sitting dejectedly by the streets complaining he had no strength to move on. Around the same period, our team members at Southwark spent time consoling an injured homeless woman on a wheelchair who was weeping profusely by the roadside due to hunger and homelessness. While Refuge Network has made great strides in providing support to thousands of homeless people and rough sleepers, the situation with many service users remains desperate. We are expanding services to cater for more individuals and families in underserved areas, so we urgently need food, clothing, toiletries, blankets, bags, household goods, and anything you can give to support the cause. Volunteers are also needed to meet growing demands. Thank you very much for your support!

We are part of Cooperation Town, a non profit network of community led food co-ops. The co-op grew from, and built on, the support which was fostered by Junction Mutual Aid which supported local people through the pandemic. The food co-op is a small buying group, which provides our members with affordable food (and a small number of other household products) which are bought in bulk and re-distributed at a very low price as part of the membership fee It is based in the Community Centre on a large housing estate in North Islington; it is open twice a week (Wednesdays 11.00 - 1.30 and Thursdays 10.00 - 11.00) to coincide with other community activities which are taking place at the same time, and attract more members. However, the membership is open to anybody who lives locally. People learn about the co-op through local leafletting, posters, networks and word of mouth. The co-op is owned by its members, who decide together what to buy and how to run the co-op. Membership is not means-tested in order to give the members a sense of dignity by not seeing this as handouts; our ethos is to avoid food waste and to share with others. There are currently 72 members in the co-op, who contribute £3 on each weekly visit (but only if they visit). For this amount, the members can choose food and household goods from the available stock. Some items are limited in order to share equally, but the co-op remains committed to allowing members to pick their own items to match their dietary choices and needs. Between 20 and 30 members use the co-op each week. In addition to the stock of dried goods and household products, plus fresh fruit and vegetables which we buy from the Cooperation Town Food Hub, we have established regular partnerships with some local shops and supermarkets which donate surplus fresh food and other goods each week. We arrange for these goods to be collected safely and taken to the community centre. We also benefit from weekly deliveries from the Felix Project, which has supported our co-op since its start in November 2021. We have a food store, with fridges and freezers, for our sole use, and recently we have established arrangements to buy fresh fruit, vegetables and fish from local traders which has extended our food offer. Apart from the obvious benefits of giving people access to good food for a very small cost, and avoiding food waste, there have been many examples of the food co-op developing community support and creating friendships. Members swap recipes and food knowledge, as well as trying new foods. Members keep an eye on others who may need extra help; people who have not attended for a while are contacted. Some deliveries are made to the housebound, and people offer to carry heavy bags for those who are less able. Our next project is to raise funds to buy a cargo ebike so that we can safely and sustainably collect and deliver food in our busy urban area, and to increase the amount of food which we can collect.

We collect donations of food, mostly non-perishable, and toiletries, to redistribute to local people in need of crisis support. We use the Trussell Trust processes of front-line professionals issuing vouchers, so what our volunteers do is issue food at distribution sessions, four times a week. We help on average over 100 households a week, so that has been nearly 6,000 people this last year. Most fall into poverty and debt due to a crisis such as illness or unemployment or benefit delays. In a rich country like the U.K. we don’t see the wealth trickle down to our most vulnerable, so we need to combat austerity with kindness.