Argos Bishop Auckland (Inside Sainsbury's)

We are a non-profit registered organisation that works from our community hub in St. Helens Auckland. Since taking over the venue, we have developed our services to include activities that aim to improve physical and emotional health, upskill, and educate, as well as reduce financial and social barriers. These activities and services include: Various Social/Learning Groups Cooking workshops Groups/events that involve food horticulture School holiday projects for families Eco Market Community events Community partnerships with external organisations and local authorities. Training opportunities Various volunteer opportunities Our social groups aim to enrich lives by offering activities that bring people together, build friendships, and support networks. We also aim to build new skills and offer educational opportunities, often working with other organisations and authorities in our area. From our groups, we can build trust, understanding, and thus support where needed. Food has always been a big part of what we are about, from our cooking workshops that are designed to inspire everyone to make better food choices through practical and fun sessions aimed at all ages and abilities, to nutritious meals and snacks created mostly from surplus foods and served within our social groups. Our Eco Market is an inclusive project aimed at helping to reduce food waste through the redistribution of surplus foods to our community. As an extension of this, foods are also shared with other organisations and schools. From this project, we can also actively reduce and educate others about the environmental impact of food waste and how a good diet can improve health. We do this through the provision of advice, guidance, recipes, and information. We want to build a stronger safer and more cohesive community, where opportunities for self-development and growth are accessible for all so that we can enhance the quality of life for residents in our local community.

Our food bank is an essential requirement within the Woodhouse Close community, a large, socio-economically disadvantaged community that we serve daily in many important ways. We are an extremely busy food bank helping local people deal with hardship, debt and other crisis situations. The food bank benefits local people dealing with hardship, debt and other crisis situations. The need continues to increase as local communities such as ours suffer disproportionately from ongoing austerity measures, welfare reform and cuts to local services. The food bank forms a key part of our Crisis Intervention service. This offers practical support to people from Woodhouse Close estate, the wider Bishop Auckland area, and beyond, who are experiencing hardship often through a change in their circumstances. In 2015, we helped 1,200 people through our programme and we forecast that we will help a similar number in 2016. Every day, we respond to an increasing caseload of urgent need arising from the current economic climate, in particular those affected by the ongoing austerity measures including welfare reform. Our services include emergency food parcels and fuel payments and the additional flexibility to purchase necessary items. In addition to our long running furniture re-use and thrift shop projects (where clothes, household goods, soft furnishings and large furniture items may be purchased at low cost, or even free of charge). Our Crisis Intervention project is a natural extension of this work. Since the Crisis Intervention project started five years ago, we have helped and supported around 5,000 people. In the year to September 2015, the number of people helped increased on the previous year by 40%. We work very closely with a range of partners and referral agencies to support vulnerable adults, particularly those experiencing severe of hardship (including problems with benefit payments) and personal emergencies. Following an assessment of need, we will provide help with food parcels, emergency credit on gas and electric accounts, furniture packages (in the case of an emergency move) and other practical help and support. We signpost to other agencies as necessary, and raise alerts which we may identify during the course of our assessments e.g. where a client exhibits behaviour which may pose a risk to their safety, or where it is clear that extra support is required. We're a busy food bank and any help you can give in the way of food donations will empower us to continue giving people a better chance in life.

Hi we are a community group in Bishop Auckland reaching into the community through food donations ,Look at the website bishopbaptists.co.uk we create Nutritious meals as takeaways at present .and in doing this we have engaged with so many needy situations and would appreciate consideration for any unsold food .We operate on a Wednesday morning ,and can use anything we have a garden project ,we appreciate that you will have a lot of enquiries . We are seeing around 40-50 people each week We started as a lunch club Three years ago needing help to look after the garden ,then we began a dementia friendly group so at the peak before Lockdown my team were feeding around 36 to a sit down meal each week We stared with REINVENT in June doing takeaway meals ,we are partnered with Fare share scheme and get some surplus items there most weeks from ASDA , we also receive from Feeding Families any items that cant go in the Hampers. The Auckland Project got us going initially and they support us with fresh veg . we are open to any donations and now have Clothes, Books, household items at times too .The garden is open to the community I have been supporting volunteers with training and backed by ,GO local Gaunless Gateway , All is done safely with safety policies and procedures in place . what is costing us are items such as the foil tubs for takeaways ,disposable cups ,sanitiser and other cleaning items . our website is updated regularly Update as we enter a new phrase within the country we are now evolving from takeaways to a social community we now have a group litter picking for the area .we now have space for sit down meals we would like to continue with the gardening and the garden is now very much a community garden ,with a view to expanding perhaps by creating a space with in the hospital grounds . Our volunteer team are a good group and we are empowering them by allowing their skills to develop and there fore hope fully then go on to employment . we are always looking for help and need some more volunteers .the next project is some sort of advice clinic This is so exciting ,we need grant opportunities ,and more donations we now see about 50 people for meals each week . we have opened as a warm space on Tuesdays and Thursdays each week through out the winter ,and to keep the momentum going intend to keep this going as an open house space .We are seeing at least 20 each of these two days ,and the need for crisis support continues to grow as we seek to support and signpost those we engage with Update We now are known as the Community Hub @Bishop Auckland Baptist Church we continue with provision for those in need as well as isolated .We have been working closely with the homeless teams this year as well as the drug and alcohol team We welcome everyone