Sainsbury's Buntingford High St Local

About New Life Church New Life Church Bishop’s Stortford is a welcoming community dedicated to fostering unity and providing a home for those seeking connection. Guided by the vision that "the lonely can find home," the church emphasises family, friendship, and fellowship. Weekly gatherings include, serving our community with food twice a week, Sunday services from 11:00 am to 12:30 pm, Friday prayer meetings from 7:30 pm to 9:00 pm, and home groups for more intimate fellowship. Utilising Food Surplus Donations for our local Community. We recognise the importance of supporting our local community, New Life Church is committed to addressing food insecurity and promoting sustainability through the effective use of food surplus donations. By collaborating with local food suppliers, supermarkets, and community members, our continuous aim is to collect surplus food that might otherwise go to waste. The church provides the following initiatives: Food Bank Services: Developing a food bank to distribute food parcels to individuals and families facing financial hardships. This service would operate on a referral basis, ensuring that assistance reaches those most in need. Community Meals Organising regular community meals to bring people together, fostering a sense of belonging and community spirit. These events would utilise surplus food to prepare nutritious meals, ensuring that resources are used efficiently while strengthening community bonds. Through these initiatives, New Life Church aims to create a supportive environment where resources are shared, waste is minimised, and every individual feels valued and cared for.

Our Village Hallis used by many social, physical, arts and educational groups but we as Trustees have recognised the need for social prescribing activities post covid. We have set up a community breakfast, relaxed afternoon cinema, bereavement group, community warmth and welcome cafe, digital inclusion workshop, crafts, games and evening cinema. We work with our sponsors on how we can bring our communities together when there is the cost of living crisis and energy crisis. With this in mind we provide food at all our community run groups without charging. We do have a donation box but it is not compulsory. We also have food heroes distributing out of date food at our hub but have recently lost some valuable slots to the bigger charities from Bishops Stortford. We are a not for profit chairity and have worked hard at reinventing our village hall due to covid. We have made many improvements so our attendees can feel warm and comfortable in their surrounds. With the food that has been coming to our hall we have been able to utilise some of the food into breakfasts, lunch, tea and snacks. This ensure that food waste goes out to a much wider community when there is enough to go round. All our Trustees are volunteers and we work virtually full time as unpaid volunteers to our community. We welcome all ages, families, and especially the elderly as Little Hadham is an ageing rural village with no amenities in our village other than a pub and our village hall. The transport is poor and many can't drive so we feel there is a reliance on what we can offer to our residents and neibouring Parishes and nearest town. Our aim is to try an bridget the gap for the food we have lost to other charities and hope that we may find a new source of food waste that will continue to provide food for our community on a weekly basis.

- The prevention or relief of poverty - Children/young people - Elderly/old people - People with disabilities - Other charities or voluntary bodies - The general public/mankind - Makes grants to individuals - Makes grants to organisations - Provides advocacy/advice/information