Living Hope, St Mary's Loughton
Loughton, UK
Living Hope seeks to love our local neighbour. We do this through a variety of means and are busy throughout the week. - Our Saved! Surplus Food Project helps to reduce good food from going into landfill and make it accessible to people in our local community, who will be really helped by it. It is distributed throughout the week, but we particularly encourage people to come on Friday mornings when we generally have a lot of food. We support approx 120 people per week through Saved! We also provide grocery bags to those in need and also have a partnership with our local COOK shop who give us frozen ready meals to distribute each week. We host our local Trusell Trust foodbank and regularly refer to them. - We love to create space for connection, reducing the negative impacts of loneliness. We run a weekly Coffee Morning for those in retirement, a monthly community meal called Hope Supper and a weekly social drop in for all ages, Mondays 3.15-5.30pm, board games, table tennis, lego, crafts and active games, a knitting and crochet group, tea, coffee and lots of cake. - We run weekly English lessons for refugees and those needing to learn English as a second language. - In addition we do seasonal clothing collections for refugees or local homeless people. A winter clothing rail where people can give or take clothing. We are doing our first summer clothing rail this summer. We do hampers for families and individuals at Christmas. We have worked in partnership with Epping Forest Foodbank, VAEF and support other local charities as we can. All our Living Hope services are offered free, although donations are appreciated. Hope Supper does have a recommended donation, but people are always welcome if they aren't able to donate. We frequently meet people in need and try to help them as we are able. We do not have a formal referral process, however, we seek to help people as we get to know them, and as we become aware of needs. People often come to us through word of mouth. We are also contacted by local social prescribers and other professionals. Our church cafe, Cafe Hope is open 9.15-2.45 Monday - Friday, and all are welcome to come in for a cuppa! It is a place of friendship and hope for many people of all ages often people who would be lonely otherwise. Often people come and stay for the day, we have a community that people are welcome to come to and be part of, a place of belonging. Our play area is very popular for carers with young children.
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