For over two years British Asian Christian Association have been providing free meals for homeless people, the economically deprived and refugees and asylum-seekers. Our work began after Trustees became acutely aware of the growing homeless community in Ilford during a series of outreach events in Ilford Town Centre (click here).
You can read a full review of our ‘Meals for the Needy’ project and watch videos (here). It includes an account of how we grew the service by meeting the homeless on the streets were they took shelter.
The current economic climate has resulted in a huge increase in the number of people who attend our service. Our fuel and food costs are increasing and we need you support to enable us to continue the project and to expand. We need larger food supplies and would like to purchase a fully electric vehicle. If you would like to support this work please donate (here).
Recently we shared details of the celebration we held for Redbridge’s homeless during the Queens Jubilee celebrations (click here).
We also informed you of our young volunteer who won a tablet that will be used to help homeless people reconnect with their loved ones, or help them to find work (click here).
During the warm summer we have had this year, a decision was made to move our meals for the needy project out into the open. We did this because it increased visibility of our project as we wanted to reach more homeless people.
Going outdoors has certainly helped with more homeless people understanding what we are doing in the area, but it also has helped us galvanize more support from the communities and a number of local people have begun to offer help with cooking food during the three days that we operate.
Queues for our food can contain up to 20 people and we are serving around 40 people most days. It is very fortunate that our relationship with Sainsbury’s, Marks and Spencer, Greggs and several local restaurants continues to provide ample food.
We are now serving Ukrainian, Afghan and wider refugees and continue to promote our work through groups such as Ramfel and others. We also serve several families who are being referred to us via local schools and this is enabling us to ensure local children are receiving the nutrition they need to be successful at school and other activities. Families receive their food by delivery to their home though a few choose to come to our distribution events. Read more (here).
Our meals are provided with drinks and we have been ensuring extra supplies of these have been available in particular to the homeless during the extremely hot weather.
We were also able to share summer clothes with homeless people who were feeling the effects of the extremely hot weather.
We are of course worried that the severe summer will lead to a more extreme winter too. Already we have been collecting items of winter clothing that we hope to deliver during the colder months. The night are already quite difficult for those living on the street and we have also been giving out sleeping bags to those who need them. If you would like to donate any clothing, cleaning and sanitary products or other gifts for us to distribute to this vulnerable group. Please contact us by email at admin@britishasiancristians.org or on our facebook page (click here) to organise this.
