ALDI KINGSTANDING

Our cause is to feed the homeless, the vulnerable and whosoever needs help. For years, we use to go out on a weekly basis to feed the homeless in the City Centre. There were some extremely cold nights. We had asked the Homeless and the Vulnerable to come to us to eat and enjoy our safe, warm space. We had started this in July 2023 and every week the numbers are increasing. Not only do they enjoy our food as it’s cooked and prepared with love, our Service Users also bask in our warm space and enjoy chatting to each other and to our volunteers. Not only do they love to natter, they also have the liberty of making loads of tea/coffee and having biscuits. At Christmas, we use to collect them from the Bus stop at Carrs Lane Birmingham City Centre and bring them to have their annual Christmas party. Last year, they will be making their way to us to have their annual lovely Christmas meal, presents, clothing and toiletries. We also run food banks twice a week where we serve the Community, vulnerable Adults and the Homeless. We are there for the Community and even in Summer we had run “snack & chat” for a couple of months where we had invited our neighbours to come for coffee and a light snack. The neighbours welcomed that gesture and suggested that we should continue to do it on a yearly basis. We thoroughly enjoy supporting the homeless, the vulnerable, our neighbours and the Community. We are based in Aston which is one of the deprived areas in Birmingham.

We are all small group of parents, teachers and community enthusiasts who aim to improve the education ans overall well-being of all students who attend Kings Rise Academy. We aim to improve the literacy and environmental education that all children receive through initiatives and events to raise funds to improve the current school grounds. Kings Rise Academy prides itself on supporting all families in need! For many years the school has run a weekly food bank on a Wednesday which supplies essential food packages to families in need. The school communicates the availability through the in house communication platform to families and they advise the school, via a Google form, it they are in need of support. The school currently has its own set up with food arrangements however the PTFA has always offered a helping hand with distribution. Recently, we have seen a growth in the number of families who need support, however we do not have the resources to feed all the families who come to us. As our PTFA evolves over time we have become aware of where our support is most needed for children and families. We have now decided to get on board with the existing team at the school to see if we can also provide surplus food to boost the amount of food we can hand out to families. This will allow us for provide necessary food parcels to even more families and ensure that when food is needed, nobody goes hungry! Friends of Kings Rise PTFA do not charge for any surplus food donations and currently have no surplus food donations in place to offer the existing set up and we have not had any media involvement in our efforts at this time. Recent Projects: Recently we established that some of the wider school grounds which are viewed by the general public needed sprucing up. A team of 4 volunteers came together and tackled the weeds, rubbish and old plants to give the area a new and fresher look! Fundraising: Our Easter event went extremely well and we were able to raise just over £200. This allowed us to purchase new bikes, trikes and scooters for our youngest students in the nursery at Kings Rise Academy :)

We are Assembles of the First Born Church based in Aston Lozells. We are making an appeal for food donations for our weekly foodbank in Lozells, which is a deprived area of Birmingham. We have been running a weekly foodbank since the first lockdown and have noticed the number of families with young children that are in need of support, people who have lost their job due to Covid and the homeless. As part of our usual program for ministering to those in need we provide food and toiletries. We would appreciate any food and toiletries that you could donate to help us to continue to support a community in need. We are currently supporting 30-40 persons per week which only accounts for the adult that collect the food, and not the other members of the family. We keep a robust register of all who collect a care package. We operate the food bank from a building at the rear of the church. We support service users who are homeless, from hostels, local community and individuals who are refered to us by their probation officer who see our sign. We are part of a Whatapp foodbank group who will refer indudivuals to us. At the foodbank we also supply clothes and bedding to individual who require them. We do not charge for our services , all the team work on a volunteery basic to support the cause. At present we do not collect surplus food from any retailers, but other food bank if they have any surplus they will notify us. We have had no local press coverage in regards to the work we are doing in the community. We would be happy to send some photos and leaflets showing what we do at the food bank. We thank you in advance and hope that you will be able to offer us some support. We promise to embrace transparency as we have always done. If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact me, Monica Bailey or Rev Angela Williamson.