Motability Operations

Over the past eight years, Community Needs Foundation (CNF) has worked very hard to build relationships with some of the most deprived and underprivileged individuals in Royal Borough of Greenwich. We operate our foodbank from a community venue in Abbey Wood, South East London, where we sort, and distribute food donations and essential household items to individuals and families in need which includes; family with children, older adults, unemployment/low income, No Recourse to Public Funds. Our service provides a safe and welcoming environment for service users to access support and advice. As a community foodbank, our greatest need is sustainable funding to enable us to continue serving our growing community effectively. We are seeking support to help cover: Core organisational running costs, including rent, utilities, insurance, equipment, and essential operational expenses. Staff salaries, ensuring we can retain experienced staff to coordinate our services, support volunteers, manage referrals, and provide consistent assistance to those in need. Programme funding to expand and sustain our community initiatives, including emergency food provision, culturally appropriate food packages, our Coffee Chat for Over 60s, cookery and healthy eating sessions, and other health and wellbeing activities. Continued food donations, including fresh, frozen, ambient, and culturally appropriate food, to ensure we can provide nutritious food parcels and respond to increasing demand throughout the year. Food and essential supplies, to meet increasing demand from individuals and families experiencing food insecurity. Volunteer recruitment and training, helping us maintain a strong volunteer workforce to deliver our services safely and effectively. With increasing demand for our services and rising operating costs, long-term funding is essential to ensure we can continue supporting vulnerable individuals and families while responding to the changing needs of our local community.

Although we started in London, we have been offering Counselling in Croydon since 2015 and currently based in Croydon. We will now like to support our community more by supporting with practical advice and tools like food via weekly wellbeing support groups / workshops to the Croydon Community. In Croydon 1 in 6 adults (67,000 people) has a mental health condition at any one time, this is costly to the wards, borough and wider society and 1 in 4 young people are struggling with emotional trauma and mental health problems. We will like to support local familes, schools, young people and their parents / main carer to be more resilient, motivated, and empowered to make right decisions and have positive outlook on their future. During this pandemic of Covid19, there is a massive fear of shortage of food, affecting the community and families we offer emotional health support to. We are still offering Psychotherapy / Counselling support by offering email counselling, telephone counselling and face to face via Zoom. We will like to still support families emotionally and practically by supporting with food.

The community centre is based on Middle Park estate, a local authority housing estate in Eltham. The centre is often referred to as the heart of the community. Our day starts at 7am when we open to provide breakfast for some 60 + children and young people. Children have a healthy, nutritious breakfast that helps to set them up for their school day. We collect children from school, they have the opportunity to do their homework, take part in activities and are given a hot meal. When the children go to school there are a wide range of activities for older people, we have a community café serving hot food four days a week. Older people are able to meet up and take part in activities, this helps combat loneliness. People are able to access a wide range of information and support at the centre, or just a cup of tea and a chat when it’s needed.