Local members of the community have come together to support families in the area with prepared meals during these unprecedented times.
Northfield Food Service is a project – based at Northfield Baptist Church – set up by Councillors Alex Aiken and Olly Armstrong in a bid to help the families in our community.
Councillor Alex Aiken (Labour, Kings Norton North) said: “We know there are thousands of children in this constituency that are eligible for free school meals who are going to miss out on food during half terms and holidays.
“That food is vital for their mental wellbeing and their study. We could not stand by and let them miss out.
“It is a new thing to get free school meals during the holidays but given the pandemic and the amount of people who have lost jobs in a result of that, we wanted to step in and make sure that they weren’t missing out just because they weren’t in school.”
They have been overwhelmed with donations. A lot of businesses wanted to help and many gave away meals during the holidays but The Digbeth Dining Club was the first to get in touch and wanted to make a difference to the people of their community.
Alex also said: “Northfield is very bad for food poverty so they got all their different food traders to give us food at different points. So in the first week, we delivered over 3500 meals, probably closer to 4000 meals and we are keeping it up one day a week moving forward.”
They have had close to 200 drivers come forward and many have not volunteered or been active in their communities before.
In the first week, they had a lot of teachers come forward with them having experienced their students going hungry previously.
“There was a survey not long ago which said the majority of teachers have at some point given a child money or food out of their own pocket.”
It will be going on for one day a week until the Christmas holidays and then throughout the Christmas period to help families.
Cllr Olly Armstrong (Labour, Northfield) said: “We believe helping people who need help.
“A lot of us have been working in the community for the last ten years or longer so the network was already here and they were willing to help other people.
“We are committed to doing each Thursday with volunteer so a group of us are taking time out on a Thursday. The chefs tell us what ingredients are in the food so we know if anyone has any allergies. We have had 500 meals go out already today to people we knew really needed them.”
When asked about how they distribute who gets the food, Olly replied: “Me and Alex get a lot of people come to us who are vulnerable in different ways, so struggling because they have lost their job or are having a rough time or they are in a job but aren’t paid enough.
“We have put some people signposted into the project, Northfield Community Partnership runs the foodbank so they have signposted people to us who are known to be struggling, The longbridge Project, which is homelessness support, they have also signposted people. On top of that all the local schools have sent names of their most vulnerable to us. We know that everyone who we are working with need that extra bit of help.”
“If some people want to take advantage of our kindness then it is okay because it is still kindness. I believe that 99% of the people really just need help.”
Helen Sephton manages a charity called The Project that supports a lot of families that are struggling. She says: “There are people struggling due to the pandemic, people are loosing their jobs, people are loosing their homes so even a little bit of food say one hot meal a week is going to make a major difference.”
As part of the Thursday meetings, both Alex and Olly would like to look at the reasons for food poverty and why the cost of living is so high. This is a launching off point to bring the community together and build ongoing work that looks at the causes of poverty.
If you would like to help or need help, you can contact them via Facebook or email northfieldfoodservice@gmail.com.
