It’s tempting to watch, read or hear about ‘food banks’ and think of them in the abstract, as places that have sprung up, in isolation; that the problem requiring them is short-term, a temporary fix to a cost-of-living problem which a small part of society is experiencing.
Both of those assertions are wrong though; as the cost to live with dignity grows weekly, each bump in prices pushes households and families further from the standards we should expect. Those previously in comfort are being forced to make cut backs, those who might have felt occasional pressure before now feel insecure towards the end of each month and those who had to live near the edge are now seriously past that point.
…and it’s affecting a significant section of our communities, with ‘emergency food provision’ existing in a number of forms now in most of our villages, towns and cities. Often through the action of volunteers, food is proving to be central to a wider support network; it’s at the heart of what really makes a ‘community’.
Take Holbeach in South Holland as a prime example.
The Community Larder has been in operation for over 10 years and has grown and expanded over that time to cope with demand. There have been people in immediate food need throughout and the larder has always worked to help them over that problem period and back onto their feet so they no longer need food support.
Through that decade, but particularly more recently, the larder reports seeing a change in who comes in, as more and more people are finding it hard to make the money they have go far enough. It might be a surprise but since COVID they’ve seen an increase in working people coming in; more families are now reliant on zero hours contracts, which can be very precarious, and they’re also seeing public sector workers, like nurses and teachers, having to make difficult decisions about where their money goes – potentially having to prioritise the roof over their family and reliable heating over food.
The Community Larder is open every Wednesday from 10-1pm for people to come in and choose what they need, and they typically provide food for 40 to 70 people in a week. Often these people are referred to them but they also cater for anyone who wants to drop in and they ensure that everyone feels welcome and no-one leaves empty handed.
Anyone facing hardship gets to choose from the ‘larder’ so they can pick whatever they want from the selection, and based on feedback, the larder sources as much fresh and healthy food as possible from the supermarkets and local community donations they work with.
On Fridays they also operate a ‘pay-as’-you-feel’ community cafe where you can get tea and coffee from 10.30am and then a two-course meal between 12-1pm. Each week they cater for between 40 and 50 people which provides not only a good home-cooked meal but also a chance to be amongst other people and part of the community.
Being such a well used hub the Community Larder group have also taken on other roles, including distributing money for heating, where they will top up household’s heating or electricity cards. They also often have supermarket food vouchers which they can distribute to people, particularly those with specialised diets.
Both the cafe and the larder are staffed solely by local volunteers. Co-ordinator Jane Francis explained that as part of a visit, people are offered a needs assessment to see whether the broader network that the Community Larder is at the heart of can help in any other ways. So, as well as food and company, that might be for housing, mental health support or other Council services, but also they often refer people to other volunteer services in the town, like the aptly named Boxes of Hope.
When the war in Ukraine began it was clear to Mandy Baxter that provisions were going to be needed for families in Ukraine so she worked out a way to make these ‘boxes of hope’; clothing, small household goods, preserved food items and more were collected from the local area and then transported to aid networks in the Ukraine.
Alongside all the local community support that they received, what quickly became apparent, as activity at their small Holbeach warehouse ramped up, was the need from local people in receiving these ‘boxes of hope’ themselves. As well as the need in Ukraine it became clear that local people were also struggling to access basic items and were finding it hard to live with the amount of dignity we should expect in our society.
Fast forward a couple of years and Boxes of Hope now provides a vital service as part of the local network (one for which, hopefully, they will receive significant funding for this year). Supported by the Community Larder they provide food parcels to those in need (and cover times when the larder is closed), they collect and renovate furniture to furnish empty homes, and they have free hot drinks and biscuits for anyone who wants to come in.
Beyond that, they now operate as a local base for the Citizens Advice Bureau (once a week, on a Thursday) and they support and provide a base for a range of other community activities – even reaching out to Lighthouse Food Bank in Spalding to help them with rural food parcel deliveries.
They also work closely and cross-refer with Tonic Health who provide youth and community activities in Holbeach from the Hub; for example, had you popped in during this Easter half term you would have found a big group of children and young adults making and devouring pizzas (and it was good to hear that no-one had pineapple on theirs!).
Tonic have also been able to source and provide air fryers to local people; access to equipment is actually one of the main barriers to healthier eating and air frying can be an efficient, convenient and cost-effective way of cooking. To support this they also continue to put on really popular cooking lessons for adults as well as providing occasional drop in events with hot drinks, soups, snacks and a place to socialise.
In addition, all three of these venues plan to grow their own vegetables this year and – along with the churchyard – are planting fruit trees for anyone in the town to collect fruit from.
So, whilst you might not notice it from the surface, underneath Holbeach has a really strong inter-connected network of organisations and volunteer groups whose aim it is to maintain and return dignity to everyone in their community.
That has to be seen as a positive; the appearance of these services speaks incredibly powerfully to our sense of community, kindness, and fairness. We do, however, also need to keep asking how we’ve got to a situation where a considerable part of our society, in every location, needs to rely on this support?
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Does your area have a similar network that you want to draw attention to? Or do you feel you need a network like this but it doesn’t yet exist? Let us know and we’ll help explore it with you.
chris@lincolnshirefoodpartnership.org
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For more information about the support organisations mentioned please visit:
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