Last week we looked back at nearly 3 years of our Meals for the Needy Project that provides hot meals and a food bank for visitors to Clementswood Community Centre, in Ilford. You can read our report (here)
Young Willow Chowdhry (12 yrs), has taken over from her sister Hannah (18 yrs) as one of the coordinators of our Meals for the Needy Project.
Every week, she sets up food tables, helps to organise the queue outside the Centre and she has recently been interviewing some of the visitors, to gauge how successful our services have been.
Here is a video of two people she recently interviewed:
Willow is a real favourite for visitors and volunteers. Her enthusiasm is infectious.
Our work with the homeless will continue through the winter months and we hope to hold a special Christmas event, with hot roast turkey and potatoes, presents such as clothes and shoes and some music for homeless people that don’t often get such opportunities to celebrate. We are expecting a turnout of over 40 visitors for the event which will be held on 16th December 2022. We then shut and re-open for Christmas Eve and resume normal hours for the following week.
Each week we pray over the food with our volunteers and later we open up our event in prayer with our homeless visitors. We also continue to share bibles that are donated to us via the local Gideons Bible group. We provide a range of hot and cold foods to our visitors, clothes when gifts are received, cleaning products and sanitary products.
Our visitors include the homeless, economically challenged and people who simply are lonely and come to meet with us and the regular visitors. Willow Chowdhry, said:
“Some of our visitors arrive really hungry.
“It’s clear they have not eaten all day, its really nice to be able to give them food.
“Whenever they take food from me they always tell me how well cooked the food is.
“I guess that’s because when Mum or our other volunteers cook food, they take care to make it they way they would want to eat it.”
She added:
“The meals change every week.
“On Thursday we served pie and mash or vegetable lasagna.
“On Friday it was jollof rice and chicken, or vegetable curry and rice.
“Today (Saturday) we are giving out fish and chips, or lamb biryani.”
Every week through the many partners that help us provide food to the most needy people in Redbridge, we also deliver 50 meals 3 days a week to the Malachai project. This is where many homeless people are housed in Ilford, in units created from converted construction site office containers.
