Food for our bodies and hope in our hearts

Aim

We are a community hub based in Newton, Chester. We are a place of welcome to those needing food for their bodies and hope in their hearts

Our vision is for a Chester community in which no one experiences hunger or social isolation. We envision a future filled with hope, where everyone has access to nourishing food and meaningful community connections, promoting a strong sense of belonging and well-being. 

We aim is to be a place of connection and support for people in need across the Chester Community, specifically focusing on providing practical help to individuals and families experiencing food insecurity.

Partnering with like-minded organizations, businesses, and community members, in a spirit of goodwill, cooperation, and trust, we aim to challenge the root causes of food poverty, develop innovative solutions, and create lasting positive social impact.

Through the community hub that is based in Newton in Chester, we supply emergency food parcels and affordable food through our Greenway Grocer project. Our desire is to Provide emergency food to those in urgent need, support people on pathways out of poverty, promote wholistic wellbeing and combat loneliness. By doing this we we support people who are experiencing food poverty and offer ongoing support as the impact of the cost-of-living crisis continues to be felt across our communities. We see so many individuals experiencing fear and anxiety, isolation and loneliness, illness, and grief. 

Our café has been registered with Warm Spaces and we will run our sessions over the coming autumn and winter months with its colder weather as a ‘warm space’. Recently we helped a person by providing them with emergency food and some toiletries and clothes; they stayed chatting at the community cafe so we could offer some further help and advice by connecting him to our local Citizens Advice who were running a session with us that day on Energy Savings Advice. We want the opportunity to help more people like this.

We are open for 3 sessions a week, for 2 of these our community café is also open where people can collect food. We provide "bespoke parcels for each individual to include some extra items of food eg bread and cheese and also any toiletries or baby food that's needed - your support will help us to keep doing this.

Recently Chester has had an influx of  Sanctuary Seekers, these are refugees and asylum seekers and so on a Thursday we now seek to support these individuals recognising there need for nourishing food and meaningful community connections, we want to promote for them a strong sense of belonging and well-being as they deal with the reorientation of their lives in a new country and new community.

We want to consolidate and develop ability to support more people so we want to open the community cafe for a 3rd session in the week. We want to provide other services alongside the cafe to support people and help find pathways for them out of poverty. eg Debt Advice. The support we get from you will enable us to do this.

This project successfully funded on 5th October 2023