This ministry is our Food Hamper programme which is a sponsored food collection and distribution programme which comprises of receipt of good quality food from major supermarkets including Marks & Spencer, Aldi Food Store and Morrisons.  

 

Genesis CLF conducted research and concluded that poverty in London is an issue and in a city as prosperous as London, child poverty in particular, is unacceptable. The rising housing cost in London is an important factor.

 

We know that from 2017 to 2019, the number of children living in poverty increased. All the signs indicate that the figures will continue to rise for the next few years and the impact of the pandemic has made a bad situation worse.

 

Poverty does not affect only people living on state benefits, it also affects many hard-working families as evidenced by the fact that two-thirds of children living in working households live in poverty.

 

The end of year statistics from The Trussell Trust stated that between 1st April 2017 and 31st March 2018, The Trussell Trust’s foodbank network distributed 1,332,952 three-day emergency food supplies to people in crisis. 484,026 of these went to children. This was a staggering 13% increase on the previous financial year when foodbank use was up by 6%.

 

This result confirms what we have suspected for some time, that a large and growing number of families lack the resources to meet their basic needs.

 

Our Helping Hands Ministry is taking the opportunity to be relevant to the community by meeting their needs and exemplifying Christ’s feeding of the five thousand through its Supermarket food distribution programme.

 

The programme distribution takes place every weekend. It is there to assist both low income families on benefits and working families on low income.

 

We distribute these foods to households inclusively, irrespective of their religion, race, sexual orientation etc.