It has been a humbling year of growth for the FEAST With Us community, transitioning from grassroots into small charity status. In the face of devastation and increased suffering, FEAST With Us transformed overnight into an essential food poverty crisis response service in London. Our hot meal delivery model has been a huge success and has been a service that councils have relied on throughout lockdown. Well done team and our amazing volunteers for stepping up to it!
At the beginning of the pandemic, everything seemed to be falling apart. With barren supermarkets shelves and community kitchens shutting down, the longevity of FEAST With Us was put in question. However, as more people struggled to put food on the table as they were forced to shield, self-isolate or were even made redundant, the trustees concertedly made efforts to recruit a reliable team of staff, volunteers and interns to ensure that operations continued to match the exponentially rising need. Increasing from 2 part-time staff to 3 full-time and 1 part-time members of staff; 7 interns, and a pool of over 700 committed and kind volunteers, FEAST With Us has been able to provide for over 1,000 vulnerable adults experiencing food poverty on a regular basis throughout lockdown. It is truly remarkable, and they are all heroes!
During this time, FEAST With Us has partnered with Camden, Islington, Haringey and Barnet councils to provide meal services across the week. Our partnership with the Single Homeless Project in Islington and with Haringey Council has seen us set up and run two 7-day day services at two hostels for homeless people, while increasing our output and support at our other four centres. FEAST With Us has worked with food distributors such as Edible London, City Harvest, FareShare and the Felix Project throughout lockdown, while special mention goes to Sainsbury’s for their readiness to collaborate with JW3 to sustain FEAST With Us operations amid rising demand.
We would also like to thank OXO Tower restaurant who spearheaded a collaborative emergency response effort between FEAST With Us and other food poverty alleviation charities in June, through which we were able to feed 250 people a day over a 5-day period during that month.
FEAST With Us representatives have spoken on multiple panel discussions about food poverty and food sustainability, and various prestigious bodies have given FEAST With Us well-deserved recognition, including the joint winner of the Caroline Walker Trust 2020 Charity Food Campaigner of the Year award. The online presence of FEAST With Us has sky-rocketed thanks to the wonderful new team of dedicated interns and loyal tech friends. The website is now beautifully designed and much more user-friendly, and the social media channels are alive and active. These achievements are reflected in the multitude of successful fundraising and awareness campaigns launched in the fight against food poverty this year.
Despite the distance and hardship of working remotely, the FEAST With Us team has retained a strong sense of community, and is developing exciting new projects to promote independence for vulnerable adults, including nutrition education programmes and sustainable food practices, such as food growing and food waste management.
This year, FEAST With Us also completed its first ever food waste audit as part of a wider sustainability initiative, and has collaborated with researchers at UCL to produce a write-up assessing the perspectives of those experiencing food poverty who are accessing FEAST With Us services. Findings will be circulated in the New Year.
Thank you to all who have helped us ameliorate the suffering of those facing food poverty this year; rest-assured everyone we support will be receiving their FEASTive meals this week. We hope you all had lovely a FEASTive period as possible, and are feeling refreshed after a well-deserved break!