+ est. £3154.50
Help us provide 10,000 meals and 2000 food parcels to individuals facing food poverty in Nottingham due to the cost of living crisis.
by Caron Boulghassoul in Nottingham, United Kingdom
With additional money we will be able to sustain our emergency food provision for longer and support more individuals in need. We have a large warehouse and walk-in fridge and freezers, so we can distribute a wide range of food, but the warehouse is looking sad currently, we only have around one third of the stock we need, so any further funds would mean we can replenish our stock to enable us to cope with further increases in demand.
Himmah is grassroots, community action charity working on poverty, race and education inequalities. We achieve this by providing direct services, like our food bank, community hot meals, the Nottingham Peoples Pantry, hate crime awareness & reporting, and heritage/ educational projects. We are currently crowdfunding in order to raise additional funds in order to sustain and expand our food bank provision as we face increasing demand.
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Himmah has experienced a significant increase in demand for emergency food parcels from our food bank. The Trussell Trust in an article published in the Guardian on 11/11/2020 reported seeing a 47% increase in food parcel provision in the first six months of Covid-19, whereas the take up of our provision was a 350% increase in the same time frame. Although demand has levelled out slightly, we continued distributing 800 food parcels a month and this figure has increased even more recently, whereby we are now averaging 300-350 food parcels a week!!! This is only likely to get worse over the next few months as the increase in food, fuel and energy prices has started to hit families who were already struggling to make ends meet.
Currently, in the UK we are facing the biggest cost of living crisis for decades through 2022 and with rising food, fuel and energy prices, we are already seeing that there will be no let-up in the number of citizens needing our support in the short-term. Inflation has now hit 8% (March 2022) yet benefits are rising by only 3.1%, which means those on the lowest incomes have to make their limited money stretch much further.
We will continue to work together with all our stakeholders – volunteers, funders, donors and staff – to protect our neighbours from the harms of food poverty and social injustice, through practical support and campaigning, with the hope that we can shape the world, or Nottingham at least, into a better place.
We need your help to do this - with an additional £10,000 of funding we could provide 10,000 hot meals and 2000 food parcels for individuals when they are facing a financial crisis and cannot afford to buy food themselves. Alongside meeting basic practical needs, Himmah will also signpost clients to other support organisations who can advise them on a range of different issues from debt, to benefits, to employability support (to help them to resolve a crisis, learn to live on a reduced income and through employment lift themselves from poverty. This will enable them to address the issues causing financial or related difficulties and reduce the likelihood that they will find themselves in financial crisis again in the future. They will also be able to find out about other services we offer over time and also other community provision, to help ensure their personal needs are met by Himmah and our partners - to ensure our citizens and communities are able to heat and eat and are not forced to choose between the 2!