Our Charity offers the local community support, activities and facilities for their daily care, facilities by reason of their youth, age, financial hardship or social, emotional and economic circumstances or for the public at large in the interest of their social welfare with the object of improving the conditions of life of the said inhabitants. We aim for the children of the vulnerable families we support to thrive and grow and we strive to support the diverse and multicultural local community, in particular families with children under 5.
As a charity we aim to improve the lives of people in the local community and fill the gap left by the closure of children’s centres. We had identified a lack of knowledge around healthy food and cooking skills in our families. The funding we were kindly awarded by Northants Community Aid has been used to promote health diets and lifestyles in the local area. Before we planned our Lunch Club and Family Cookery Groups we consulted local families to ask for their specific areas of need and one parent commented, “I can’t really cook, so any help you could give me would be great.” (Local parent of five children). We also had an incident where a young mum fainted as she had not been eating as she gave all the food she bought to her children.
Many children in this area and the wider community live in families where food poverty is part of their everyday life. Parents have limited cookery skills and rely on expensive pre-prepared ready meals and take away junk food to feed their families. Many families believe a healthy diet is not affordable. Since receiving the grant from Northants Community Aid, we hold a weekly Lunch Club and regular Family Cookery Groups that ensure all of the family are fed. There have been some additional positive outcomes from starting these additional groups. More young mums (under 25) are engaging with our family support team and getting support before Social Care involvement and we are seeing children trying fresh fruit and vegetables that previously their parents and caregivers had not been able to introduce into their diets.
Ideally we would be able to hold Family Lunch Club every day so that is the next project we will be aiming to expand. The key to effective use of the funding we were awarding is talking to the community before allocating the funds to any new programmes as that way people feel engaged and part of the process.
We are so grateful to Northants Community Aid for their support!
Tracey Hamilton
Charity Manager
