Lidl South Ockendon

The Hub works in partnership with Hub volunteers, the local Community Forum, Aveley Family Hub and primary and secondary schools in Aveley, to provide the residents of Aveley with a free school uniform rack, a free Community Fridge/Freezer and a free Community Pantry. The Community Groups have recently come together to raise money to provide a bag of ingredients to families, once a week, to cook a healthy meal from scratch for only £2.00 a bag. The bag also includes a recipe card. The ingredients supplied are enough to feed a family of four. The ingredients, which cost on average £2.00 plus per bag, are currently purchased using the money that the community groups have raised. The £2.00 that is taken for each bag goes straight back into the fundraising pot to continue the food bag project for as long as it is needed. There is no profit made on the sale of the food bags. The community groups promote the above projects to agencies who visit the Hub, for example, Financial Inclusion Officers, Local Area Co-ordinators, Community Led Support, Job Centre Plus, local schools and Family Hubs so that those most in need of support can be signposted to the Hub for a food bag. At the same time, they are also given information regarding Hub activities for example physical activity groups, Adult Learning and volunteer opportunities, Lunch Club, Craft Group, Board Games Club and parent and toddler groups, which look to decrease social isolation. We are hoping this project will also reduce food waste and encourage people to enjoy 'cooking from scratch' using fresh ingredients. The Hub has a not for profit Coffee and Snack Bar run by the volunteers. We will continue to hold fund raising events, however we would welcome any support we can get from local businesses with the projects linked to the cost of living that we are providing to keep them going as long as we can, especially over the winter period to support our residents. Recently the Hub volunteers put on a free 2 course meal and an entertainer for families identified by our local schools and Aveley Family Hub in the school half term and we hope to be successful in securing funding to do this in each of the school holidays with different families each time, to support with Holiday Hunger and Food Insecurity. We have also applied for funding to enable the Hub volunteers to provide a 'Warm Space' in the winter where the Coffee and Snack Bar offers offers a free hot drink and a meal for £1.00 once a week. Any food donations from supporters of Neighbourly will be used to restock our Community Pantry and Fridge Freezer. Any monies donated will be used to purchase ingredients for the food bags.

All the services the church offers are completely FREE of CHARGE. We are a church organisation and everything and every service we give is entirely free We a church whose main purpose is not to distribute foods and aids to service users in the community. We are a church like Church of England, Catholic, the Baptist, etc and we have several hundreds of members as congregation. We have a membership of about 5-600 in the Fountain Gate PIWC District alone. The membership is a mixture of people of various levels of social standings that include the poor, socially disadvantaged, immigrant families who have not recourse to public funds, the jobless, single parents, older people, widows, and widowers, the physically and sensory impaired, etc. All these people are in the church that we support daily with the provision of food and finances. It is not difficult to identify them because we live and fellowship with them. Another category of people we support are in the community. We do our own collections of food, clothing, money and other unperishable items and send to homeless people in the streets and homeless people’s shelters (sure you will find some picture from our official website), the church sends donations to residential homes, etc. The Church of Pentecost (PIWC FGT District) which we in Grays are part of collect imperishable quality food items and donate to the Barking and Dagenham Food Bank periodically (some pictures on our official website and social media handles – links on our Neighbourly site. If you guys will support us, we will be able to extend our humanitarian activities to many places and on regular basis. The church operates a project called “We Care Corner” where, food supplies are kept on each church day for families and visitors who are struggling to pick items and food supplies they need for the days ahead. I can bet you, this is a very popular initiative. We are doing so well already as a church, if you help us, we will be able to do more with a lot of resources.

Homeless help in Basildon is a community group of volunteers that aim to help homeless people. It is a not for profit organisation, no volunteers are paid; all donations are used directly to help the homeless. Please contact the group directly through Facebook if you have spotted someone homeless in the Basildon area and we will get in contact with them. Help for the homeless includes • Providing hot and cold food • Collecting and providing second-hand clothing • Collecting and providing bedding • Collecting and providing toiletries • Assisting with furniture for homeless people who have been found a place. Sky (The founder) won the Essex Pride "unsung hero" award in 2019. We also won 3 Basildon council volunteer awards in 2022: Voluntary group of the year, Peoples Choice Award and Community star.