Elgin Community Kitchen is a social enterprise based in the Carr Hill area of Gateshead. Currently we are closed to the public and have lost our main source of income which was from working in partnership with a local college to train young people with barriers to employment. During the COVID-19 outbreak we have seen a dramatic increase in pensioners requiring our hot meal delivery service. We are also working with local schools to ensure children who we usually help during the school holidays have access to hot cooked food. We are looking to raise money to help us continue and increase capacity for providing food parcels and hot meals to those in need right here in Gateshead.
Since opening in October 2018 we have provided
• in excess of 700 meals to local children in the holidays
• healthy eating workshops for 40 children
• 25 weekly pay as you feel Fareshare markets ( which we now deliver)
• fully inclusive volunteering opportunities for 6 people
• work placements for 8 students
• 2500 hot meals delivered and served to pensioners in their own homes
• 400 hot meals delivered to Age concern for dementia cafe service users
• partnership work with other social enterprises
• low cost healthy food to the Children centre users
The benefits to the local community from the list above include empowerment of local people, tacking poverty, promoting positive mental health, relieving isolation in older people, employment and many more.
The main aims of the social enterprise:
• Provide affordable food and educational food based workshops to families in an area of Gateshead which is affected by poverty.
• Operate a hot food delivery service aimed at older/ disabled individuals.
• Engage the local community through volunteering and enhance their life and work skills
• Promote the health and well being of local people and promote social inclusion
Going forward there are more plans in place for additional projects including working more with local schools providing healthy cooking workshops under the name “Cookery’s Cool”. Working with the Family Nurse Partnership to provide groups and training for their service users, extending the volunteer ran youth club cafe and hopefully restarting walking sports for local people.
The organisation has also been approved to become a training provider for NOCN and hope to start training and issuing qualifications to the volunteers and service users.