Kindness Homeless Street Team Community Cafe

Aim

For a community cafe to offer food in a warm environment. Funds will be used to help acquire and run facilities and to address poverty.

Laura McSorley started the Kindness Charity in December 2019 and it has grown into feeding 300 people each week a hot meal and handing out 70 food parcels weekly, recycling clothes and furniture to those that need it. We now have a volunteer base of 80/90 and want to extend our services to reach as many people as we can to help reach those in need.

Our vision is to extend our services by opening a café to offer food in a warm environment free from standing waiting to be fed in the unpredictable Scottish weather. Funds will be used to help acquire/run these facilities and to address climate action as this project will improve mental health and the quality of life of our service users by offering outdoor activity/exercise, eating more fruit & vegetables that they can grow themselves, thus promoting a healthy thriving community. We will continue to collect food from supermarkets and redistribute it to feed our service users and address our zero-food waste policy. 

People in poverty are at an increasing risk from the climate crisis, as we rely on costly fossil fuels the energy price hike means our service users will need to choose between eating and heating. To promote our community remaining healthy/thriving our allotment's fresh supplies, redistributing unwanted food and recycling furniture will help them prepare against some of the impact of the energy hike. We have a volunteer who works in sustainability who will be heading up our sustainability team. She will be calculating our carbon footprint, producing an annual sustainability report and eventually working to make us carbon neutral.

How we help now

Times are tough and we aim to bring a touch of #kindness to hundreds of homeless and vulnerable people within Glasgow. We do this in many ways...

• Our soup kitchen opens 3 nights a week (in all weather!) and gives those people hot and cold food, toiletries, clothing and food parcels
• Our volunteers walk the streets handing out food and essential supplies to homeless
• We provide families (currently 40 families every week) with food parcels 
• Our drop-in centre is open 6 days a week, where people can come for emergency clothing and supplies, having been referred from other major charities such as addiction support

We also…

• Provide school uniforms for under privileged kids and run events for kids and communities including street clean-up events with prizes
• Help people with housing and benefit applications and put them in touch with support networks and charities relevant to their needs 
• Collecting and delivering furniture and household essentials to those who are in need, also decorating and making accommodation liveable 
• Run campaigns & events to raise awareness of mental health, addiction and poverty issues including our recent ‘Recovery Walk’
• Involve former homeless and addicts in our charity volunteer pool – giving them a purpose and a family (80% of our core volunteers have come from a challenging or deprived background)
• Events including ‘Haircuts for the homeless’ which 50 people take advantage of every month, and a Christmas dinner and a gift event for 200 people
• Most importantly, we treat everyone with the utmost respect and kindness…no matter their circumstances!

This project successfully funded on 27th December 2022