Originally from Wolverhampton, just five minutes away from Molineux, but now living in Telford, I joined the Foundation in March 2021.
My background has always been in community and charity work. Before I joined the Foundation, I was manager of Telford Crisis Support and worked there for seven years.
I have also worked for Citizens Advice Telford & Wrekin as well as Telford & Wrekin Council.
With my experience of managing a foodbank, managing volunteers, emergency aid and a love for the club, the position of food poverty project manager leading the Feed Our Pack project seemed like an opportunity I just couldn’t miss.
I have now been with the Foundation for 10 months and I feel incredibly lucky to be part of such a fantastic organisation. The Foundation are an incredible team and we all support each other on every single project.
So what is Feed Our Pack? Well, the project itself is split into three different areas; foodbank support, distributing food parcels to families in crisis and holiday hunger which involves working in schools to provide activity camps during the school holidays for people identified as needing additional support for a variety of reasons.
When free school meals aren’t available during the holidays, we also run breakfast clubs and provide free lunches to local primary school children.
Our holiday hunger project is led by a team of school educators who work with the city’s primary schools by using the power of the club and their knowledge and expertise to improve the educational attainment of the city.
Between Easter and Christmas this year we have been able to deliver over 100 activity camps to over 700 children. The camps themselves involve sports activities, workshops on subjects like nutrition and hydration whilst a key part is also reaching the young people basic recipes which they can cook themselves at home.
Through Feed Our Pack we have also distributed 2,000 food parcels to local residents that have been referred to the project by our partner schools. Many families can find themselves in crisis through no fault of their own. Many common reasons that families need support with food parcels can be because of a relationship breakdown, domestic violence, debt, rising cost of living and the knock-on effect of the Covid-19 pandemic with many people losing their jobs and suffering from long term illnesses.
We know that we can’t tackle food poverty alone, so that is why we have a made a commitment to provide support for 26 different foodbanks and community groups in the city who have been working tirelessly since the first lockdown was announced in March 2020 to make sure as many Wolverhampton residents as possible had access to food and hygiene products.
We have linked up with national emergency food re-distribution charity His Church. The charity is based in a large aircraft hangar in Lincolnshire and operates by collecting food, hygiene products, clothing and toys which can no longer be used or sold by distributors but are still of a high quality and will make a positive difference to people out in the community.
This link up is going to help 26 of the city’s foodbanks produce and deliver an additional 60,000 meals a year, an overall increase of 30% in their provision for the community. On top of that, adding our planned work with food parcels and holiday activities, we expect to provide over 200,000 meals to people in need in Wolverhampton over the next 12 months.
On top of that we have also started to accept donations from fans at every home game which are then distributed directly to foodbanks across the city. For me, this creates a real link between Wolves fans and the families and individuals who receive support from the city’s fantastic network of foodbanks, community groups and services. It really does feel like we are one pack.
As we look ahead to Christmas, we will be running holiday activities as well as working with our partners to distribute hundreds of food parcels across the city, so no one goes without this Christmas.
Who knows what challenges 2022 will bring, but I’m confident that Feed Our Pack will continue to grow as a project and provider more and more support to local children and families.
Thanks to all the Wolves fans for such fantastic support of Feed Our Pack and hope you have a very happy Christmas.
TOMORROW | We hear from one of the students on the Foundation’s degree course as she pens her first diary.
