Tuesday, July 21, 2020

The Corona Chronicles - Football against Hunger!


I completed two cycles in two boroughs today with over 20k clocked for my Lonely Orphans #100Mile challenge. I met up with Chris at Dagenham & Redbridge FC to collect my weekly shop and deliver ro three mental health patients.

In the grand scheme of things I’m like a goal hanger. There’s a lot of people in the background working ten times harder to make this magic happen.

Each recipient I visit tells me they do have food but they’re always short and often hungry. The support of our local Foodbanks have firstly been a great source of support for many individuals and families who have been shielding, isolating, homebound and Covid positive. 

Secondly, the significant roles played by volunteer led Foodbanks during this pandemic have really shown the great the depth of poverty is within our communities. 

From my frontline experience I can comfortably say that although we have the visible recipients at soup kitchens and Foodbanks, there are huge numbers of others who are simply too shy to reach out and ask for help. Instead they suffer in silence until someone kind hearted notices, offers help or refers them on. 

The three people I deliver to on a Tuesday would not be known to the Hedgecock Community Centre Foodbank or the Barking & Dagenham Food Network had their mental health nurses not contacted me directly. 

Then there’s the issue of provisions and without the co-ordination of Nighat Bhola and Humdum Foodbank we would have no network to collect food from. 

This is community service at its very best.

John the Hammer was sitting on his doorstep when I did my last drop. He spotted my LFC trackie and scoffed, “Is there a fancy dress party nobody told me about?”

I love my community!



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