GAIL's Bakery Henley

Looprun is a response division and part of an independent social enterprise. This is more than food and is part of a supportive services platform to help people get sustained in their own individual way. With up to 94% success rate and seeing once those receiving free Looprun response bags to returning to stores as shoppers with baskets full. These are the impact stories created when all come together to do good for good. Service users are signposted to Looprun mostly from referrals including professionals in social and healthcare. Looprun provides free non perishables, perishable food, toiletries, and brand new clothing to people facing a temporary challenge. Whatever supermarkets, stores, and retailers can do is turned into a grateful donation to a neighbour in need. This is a response to real people in real-time. No food is banked providing a direct in and out service. We believe if the food is stored then a person in need is not getting any food, hence we provide an instant response and instant impact service. Looprun has access to professional volunteers who carry out a confidential support service to people in need. From homeless shelters, hostels, sheltered housing, care homes, soup kitchens and schools. This is a non voucher, free and confidential service. This means Looprun can reach more people in need with food donations. Anyone that receives a Looprun bag of essential food items is sustained thus creating a loop cycle. All are invited to become part of these sustainable stories in your local community. For further information and gallery access on the impact of Looprun please visit: Website: https://www.looprun-sciv.online/

We are a free service providing professional debt help for individuals or families struggling with unmanageable debt. Debt is experienced by people from all walks of life and could have the potential to be only a few steps away from many of us in a job loss, illness, bereavement, or relationship breakdown. Poverty is so much more than going without. Poverty destroys lives. It robs people of joy, hope, and opportunities. It tears families apart, isolates those most in need of support, and leads many to believe there is no way out. We want to serve our community by bringing hope, compassion, care and practical help. As well as Debt help we also provide lifeskills courses and job club services. We also love to bless our community with food where needed and are grateful for the NOMAD food bank for supporting the families we work with. It is amazing to be part of a community in Henley where time, money and surplus goods are shared and given with a generous heart by those who are able to. Anything we receive from surplus food donations will be redistributed within 24 hours of receiving to families and individuals that we work with as a blessing to them.

We are a solidarity focused project who use food to bring people together and help people in food poverty. We are not a charity. We believe in working with people, without bureaucracy or hierarchy. We receive no formal funding. We just want to work directly with the community to support our migrant friends, without the red tape (but all of the safeguarding). We are focused on supporting asylum seekers in Reading. During lockdown in 2020, many refugres awaiting their decision with stuck in limbo, allocated to a hotel in town and with their tiny asylum allowance confiscated. This is because the accommodation they're stuck in is providing 'care' via a private firm on a contract with the Home Office. So what does that care look like, that they should have no money to buy pants or baby food or toothpaste? Two plain pasta meals and an apple and two teabags! A chance conversation with one of them led to a grass roots support group springing up. Throughout 2020 we supported these vulnerable people with over a hot meal every night and bi weekly clothes, phones, referrals, phone credit and toys. Now, that our friends have been moved on, and move have arrived, we've found space in a local church and opened our doors and become a social foodbank for asylum seeking migrants. We hold regular BBQs and lunches to celebrate togetherness. As a group of mates and connections from across our lovely town we knew we had to do something while the council, govt and others don't, and so we are. We work with amazing members of the community, regular people, who donate food, spare money and serve our friends . We then sort them, serve them, and offer as much emotional support as we can while our friends, often fleeing brutal conditions, go through the dehumanizing process of claiming asylum in the UK. Come and get involved, whether it's serving food (dm us on Facebook or Instagram), sparing some money or donating some groceries. Solidarity, not charity.