Lidl Harwich

We are a local charity that has been at the heart of community transformation in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire and Suffolk since 1852. Above all, our focus has always been on building proactive and sustainable communities with an emphasis on supporting Young People and helping them to realise their full potential on their journey from dependence to independence. We work with individuals and families to build better futures through our extensive range of programmes and interventions. This includes Housing, Childcare, Health & Fitness, Youth Projects, Youth Justice Services, Mental Health Counselling, Employability Programmes, Volunteering and much more. Our services provide opportunities for all young people, whether they’re facing difficult and challenging issues or simply looking for a new direction. We deliver our programmes across the whole of Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, with key local provision across the region. This YMCA is also proud to be part of a global family, operating in over 140 countries, forming the world’s oldest and largest youth charity.

Home-Start Harwich offers support, friendship and practical help to parents with young children in our local community. We offer a unique service, recruiting and training volunteers, who are usually parent themselves, to visit families at home who have at least one child under the age of eleven years, to offer informal, friendly and confidential support. Home-Start Harwich helps give children the best start in life. It supports parents as they grow in confidence, strengthen their relationships with their children and widen their links with the local community. Our aim is to enable families to lead healthy, happy and successful lives. Our Home-Start scheme is rooted in the community we serve and has been established for over 21 years. As an independent charity we are managed locally but supported by the national Home-Start UK organisation. Home-Start Harwich has a proven, lasting, positive impact on the development of children and the health and welfare of the families in this area. By listening to families and understanding what they want, we are able to provide services locally that meet their needs.

We are providing cheap affordable food using a unique format. While we have also ran a foodbank for the last five years and will continue to do so, we have found that there is a very significant percentage of those in need who do not use it for various reasons. Our unique BASIC Community Pop-Up shop idea has transformed the lives of many suffering from food insecurity. We now run four a week in Felixstowe (five fortnightly) and have now opened in Ipswich are six locations. The food, which is primarily supermarket excess, is offered to absolutely anybody who wishes to come along. We do not have any means tests or referral needs. They are literally open to anybody at all. A full list of the present locations can be found on our website under 'pop-up shops'. The result of the five years in Felixstowe has been an amazing reduction in the amount of referrals for food bank assistance as people in need know that they can go and choose the food they need from the pop-up's without any invasive questions of any kind. During 2020, despite the pandemic restrictions, we opened at six sites across the town of Ipswich and in 2021 we started to open at sites in more rural area's of Suffolk. To date we are open in Newmarket and in the village of Debenham. More sites are in the advance discussion stage.