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IMAGE: Mobility challenged visitor is served at our ‘Meals for the Homeless’ project, as volunteers are on hand to offer assistance.

Visitors to British Asian Christian Association’s ‘Meals for the Needy’ project have a wonderful month of January full of extra treats.  On New Years Day Naomi Chowdhry shared a birthday cake with our regular visitors including asylum seekers, refugees, the homeless and others struggling with the economy.  Read more (here).

On 16th January a cake was paid for by Hannah Chowdhry who is now 19 years old.  Though she was not there in person volunteers distributed the cake a few days after her birthday, fulfilling her promise to visitors.

On 17th January, a local hotel provided some fresh left over sandwiches and sumptuous desserts, which were collected and distributed within our project.

Even better, on 23rd January 2023, one of the co-owners of an Afghan restaurant had their first child and they shared baclava with our visitors to celebrate.  

 

Yummy sandwiches awaiting us in a hotel’s kitchen.
Two of our regular visitors.
Vegetable curry and rice anyone?
Fresh pizza for a sullen visitor.
Our meals are prepared by local volunteers, organizations and professional food outlets.
Our centre becomes a social hub for the homeless who enjoy being in the company of others.
Visitors are from a range of ages.

 

Various schools  are donating ready made cold food to serve with our hot meals. Beal school donated these sandwiches.  It is with so much help that we have been able to provide food for up to 45 people a day 3 times a week.  We also give 50 hot meals each of these days to the Malachi Project in Ilford a temporary shelter.
Hot Samosas are delivered every week by a regular local donor.
Food is distributed in containers that can be recycled. We provide old used carrier bags when needed but are firm with visitors that they must reuse these bags.
Greggs provide regular meals for distribution on all three days.
A Local pizza company provides free pizzas once a week.
Our volunteers work hard to set things up neatly before visitors arrive.
The range of food for visitors to our Meals for the Needy project is unique.
Hot meals, cold meals and varied cakes and other desserts, it’s a normal occurrence at our centre.

We are one of the few charities serving hot meals across the country, that carried on working through the Christmas holidays.  After the 16th of December Christmas Party (click here), The next two weeks at our Meals for the Homeless project were covered by volunteers Juliet, Hannah, Naomi and Leah Chowdhry only. Juliet Chowdhry also cooked all the hot meals for this period and we had a reduced food bank from Marks and Spencer only.

You can learn more about our Meals for the Needy project through our last review (here).  The review contains images and videos of our work through the years, describing how and why we started the project and plotting our successes and failures.

British Asian Christian Association has been running our ‘Meals for the Needy’ project since 23rd January 2020 (click here).

We have won community awards and recognition of our work even appearing on BBC News during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown.

BACA has seen a growth in visitors since the cost of living crises.  We are now seeing up to 45 people a day but have lost some of our partners due to personal reasons and finance. The impact our work has had in our community has been phenomenal and we believe God is in control.  That said we could not operate without the generosity of our donors and if you would like to commit something towards this work you can do so by clicking (here).  One of the capital items we are desperately trying to obtain is an electric vehicle as soaring fuel costs limit our operation – please pray for our success with this aim.

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