Food hub helps Gascoyne community

As the cost-of-living crisis gathers pace, one local charity is working hard to ensure everyone in a Hackney community has access to healthy food.

Children with Voices (CwV) provides hot meals, food parcels and essential supplies to support people across the Gascoyne estate through its busy food hub.

The hub is staffed by volunteers from across the community, with funding and support from social housing provider Sanctuary, food charity the Felix Project and the FareShare network. It operates out of the Community Centre on Gascoyne Road, from 11am to 2.30pm on Wednesdays.

The goal is to make sure that nobody goes hungry and everyone has access to healthy food, but the food hub also offers advice on nutrition, combatting obesity, and access to benefits and local support.

Each week volunteers arrive at 11am and start unpacking food delivered to the community fridge the previous day. There are four community cooks who volunteer on rotation, each bringing their own unique skills and flavours to the kitchen. The meals they make are cooked with love and with flavour.

Michelle Dornelly, founder of CwV said: “There are a lot of people out there struggling to get by, to provide for their families. And the problem is getting worse not better – meaning we’re needed now more than ever.

“We’re already seeing people struggling with their gas and electricity and some of the people we’re working with aren’t able to cook or heat their food anymore. The meals they collect from the food hub might be the only hot meals they eat all week.”

Local resident, Chair of the Gascoyne Residents Association and Trustee of Gascoyne One Community Centre, Alana Heaney, added: “Our community relies on the service offered by Michelle and the Children with Voices team. Without them, children and older people would be going to bed hungry. You should see the relief on their faces when they know that support is available and that they’re not going to be judged. Everyone should have a right to food.”

Sanctuary’s neighbourhood partnerships manager, Toby Moore, commented: “It’s inspiring to see how people in the Gascoyne community have come together to support the food hub. It provides a much-needed service and we’ve been really pleased to support it with funding over the past year.”

The food hub is available to anyone living in Gascoyne or the surrounding area who’s in need. For more information, contact Children with Voices on 07402 499742 or childrenwithvoices@outlook.com