Sainsbury's Sloane Ave Local

Beacon House consists of self-contained flats. Young people staying with us have access to staff 24 hours a day and there is a communal lounge, garden, and skills room. Customers are referred by the Borough’s Social Inclusion, Independent Support and Children and Families teams; they normally have medium-to-high support needs. When customers move in, we empower them to make decisions about their support from the very start, such as choosing their support worker and the times of 1:1 sessions. Our approach focuses on encouraging them to identify their strengths and goals. From there they can choose how they want to progress, and take ownership of their journey into independence. Each customer receives a starter pack to help them settle in, and while at the service they can develop independent living skills like cooking, budgeting, fostering positive relationships and building their self-esteem. Our Health and Wellbeing team deliver mental health support, in partnership with external organisations like Insight. Support into education, training or employment is tailored to individual circumstances. We offer advice, and we connect customers to education opportunities and volunteering roles. Alongside this, we explore underlying barriers that they may face to accessing these things, like physical or mental health needs. This work is often done in partnership with partners like Spear. When customers are ready to move on, we help them to do so. That might mean that they return to their family home, or look for less supported or fully independent accommodation. Fully independent options are usually shared housing in the private rented sector.

The Supermarket runs every Wednesday from 9.30-10.30am at St Marys Church, Wyndham Place. We provide basic groceries and household goods such as rice, pasta, bread, milk, honey, a variety of canned and fresh vegetables, as well as washing up detergent, soap and sanitary products to name but a few. Anyone who is in need of help is welcome to come and help themselves to our supplies, with an optional donation of £3. Guests can take 15 items as a single user or 20 as a family. We ask for an optional donation, as it adds a sense of dignity to visiting the supermarket, but it is by no means mandatory. We operate as a charity outreach scheme with St Marys church, our food is purchased solely using charitable donations, and any money guests give goes directly back into buying groceries. We purchase groceries through Sainsbury's and Asda as well as using Bankuet ( A company that supplies foodbanks across the UK). Donations can be made directly to the St Mary's Social Supermarket account, operated by St Marys Church, or alternatively directly to our account on Bankuet. Any food donations will be collected Tuesday evening and distributed at the Supermarket on Wednesday morning, going directly to the guests. We have access to fridges at the church so can store any perishable foods there overnight. Food donations are not included in the allocated number of items so guests can help themselves to anything they want from donated food on top of their 15 or 20 items. Social Supermarkets throughout the country offer an alternative to food banks as guests can choose what they would like to have and there is a focus on respecting each person who comes through our doors as equals. Alongside the supermarket we serve tea and coffee gifted by St Marys Church and cakes, (cakes donated by Selfridges) to the guests. We want to combat loneliness in the community, so we provide a safe place for our guests to sit, have a chat and connect with each other and the volunteers. We want to build a real community within the supermarket, where volunteers and guests make friends and build a support system. Our goal is to build up our surrounding community to work together and make sure no one in our area goes hungry! We are looking to expand in order to help the growing need in the community currently we have enough donations to serve around 20/30 people. But there are so many more in need we would love to help. A weekly shop for one person is worth approx £20, we would love to help around 50 people weekly, which costs approx £1000 a week. So any donations that could help us reach that goal would be incredible. We are looking for both monetary and food donations at the moment. If any local business would like to come by and see what we do before donating we would love to welcome you! Do reach out with any further questions. Thank you so much. The Social Supermarket Team.

While thousands of Londoners go hungry each day, safe, healthy and usable food is being disposed of as waste. City Harvest collects this nutritious surplus food from all segments of the food industry including restaurants, grocers, manufacturers, wholesalers, hotels and caterers. WHO DO WE DELIVER TO? We help vulnerable people throughout London. City Harvest regularly delivers high quality, nourishing food to organisations that provide meals to vulnerable people including homeless shelters, soup kitchens, centres for veterans, and organisations that assist people with alcohol or drug addictions. WHAT IMPACT DO WE MAKE? We rescue almost two tons of food weekly. This food helps organisations serve thousands of healthy meals each week and reduce their annual grocer bills, freeing up funds that can be reinvested in other vital support services. Some of the food we rescue is diverted from going to landfill where it would release gases toxic to the environment. HOW DO FOOD DONORS BENEFIT? We rescue food in a safe, easy, reliable way. We make it simple for food donors to get their nutritious food to desperate people and reduce their waste collection costs. Customers prefer to patronise sustainable restaurants and employees experience a huge morale boost from giving to those in need. Food donors appear daily on our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram feeds. The Sustainable Restaurant Association encourages food donations to City Harvest. With one new van we'll be able to deliver 135 tons of food in one year. This translates to 270,000 meals to people in need.