As we welcome in the new year, most of us take the time to reflect on the year gone by and the new year ahead, making resolutions to perhaps move more and eat less, and to be more committed to helping others who may be less fortunate than ourselves. What many of us are not aware of are the local charities who work year-round dedicating themselves to helping and supporting some of our most vulnerable members of the Fylde Coast community by providing essential items to help meet their basic human needs.
Charities such as Wesley’s Community Café & Larder, and Helping Hearts Fylde serve the surrounding community every day, week-in, week-out throughout the year and provide additional support during the difficult Christmas and new year holidays. For many of us, this is a time of celebration and happiness, however, for individuals and families most in need, this can be a time of worry and anxiety. With this in mind, equipped with bags of generous donations collected from across the South Fylde Group and coupled with a generous donation of £2,400 from the West Lancashire Freemasons’ Charity; the South Fylde Group worked closely with these two local charities to see how best they could support these organisations to establish exactly what they needed at Christmastime 2024.
David Jenkinson, South Fylde Group Charity Steward, reached out to Paul Caddy, Chairman of Wesley’s Community Café & Larder, based in St Annes to see how the group could help with their cause. The café is a very special community-based charity that provides a safe place for people to come together to socialise, enjoy a hot meal and receive donated food and essential toiletries to help them get by. A new creative community programme supported by Church Road Methodist Church and Fylde Council also offers the opportunity to learn new skills, like art, cooking on a budget, IT proficiency and interview techniques to help further enrich people’s lives and build better futures. David was in awe at the fantastic work, help, support and advice the charity offers and was confident the South Fylde Group would be keen to offer assistance where they could.
David said: “Paul proudly showed how the charity has two separate functioning aspects. Firstly, the café cooks and offers hot meals to those who need it. This requires a hands-on approach and impressively, the necessary manpower support for the kitchen comes from not only volunteers, but from those who visit and eat in the café. Paul and his team train those clients who are interested in learning how to cook and prepare their own meals. Paul, a trained chef, acutely aware of the current cost-of-living crisis, proudly boasts that he can teach his visitors how to cook a healthy and nutritious meal for a family for less than the price of a Big Mac, providing them with the life-skills and know-how to help them live a healthier and more independent lifestyle.”
David continued: “The other aspect of Wesley’s Café is a Community Larder which provides essential food and toiletries to those in need. I was overwhelmed at the amount of basic food items, essentials and toiletries that the larder stocked and distributed. Nappies, baby wipes, baby formula, dog food, coffee, sugar, washing powder, washing up liquid and all the other basic day to day items needed for a functioning household are available. Paul explained how the café and larder, which operates Monday to Friday, are acutely aware of the essential role they play in the community and the positive effect they have on the people in need, seeing demand increasing week-on-week, particularly on the run-up to Christmas. As a result, they must carefully plan out all the logistics of how they can collect, store and distribute to optimise the donations, which is not an easy task. Wesley’s Café team are incredibly passionate and dedicated to supporting those in need within their local community. Their Christmas mission was to provide approximately 150 full Christmas dinners where the community could enjoy the meal together, with no one having to have Christmas dinner on their own. South Fylde Group knew they could help Wesley’s Café achieve their Christmas goal”.
With a thorough understanding of the widespread need on the Fylde Coast, David Jenkinson also made contact with Andrew Mills, Chairman of Helping Hearts Fylde, based at the New Life Community Centre. Helping Hearts have been running since 2020, supporting the local Fylde Coast community. Similar to Wesley’s Café, Helping Hearts is a community-focused charity supporting local people who are in need. They offer support for alleviating poverty, temporary accommodation, counselling and many areas of essential advice, support and guidance. Helping Hearts will also signpost individuals to external agencies. The charity offers a hot meal, food bank, baby essentials and even a pet food bank two days a week, Wednesday and Thursday. Helping Hearts are a huge team who proudly serve and support a large ever-growing local community who may struggle year-round, but often find the festive season a particularly challenging time.
David said: “With the current cost-of-living crisis, the amount of people who rely on Helping Hearts has increased by around 600%. Currently they are supporting over 100 local people and their families each week. It all began with the Helping Hearts team tackling poverty head-on, walking the streets of Blackpool, offering food, drinks and essentials to those in the most need. The charity expanded to allow them to offer an increased free service to those who face homelessness, the most vulnerable people living on the streets and those simply experiencing tough times”.
David continued: “They are an amazing team who are incredibly proud to serve their local community. Andrew explained the positive impact they have on individuals and families, but stressed that it desperately relies on donations to help and support over 150 families and individuals who will rely on the food bank during those vital few days before Christmas. South Fylde Group made it their mission to supply Helping Hearts with enough produce for the charity to meet the huge local demand.”
As a result of the many face-to-face conversations between the South Fylde Group Charity Steward and the two local charities, the charity team were able to build up an in-depth understanding; enabling them to pinpoint exactly what they needed. Rather than simply providing the charities with cheques, which would add the job of sourcing, buying and collecting the goods to an already over-stretched team of volunteers, Wesley’s Café and Helping Hearts were able to send the South Fylde charity team detailed lists specifying exactly the items they desperately needed for their community food banks. With all the information to hand, the South Fylde Group planned the logistics of the best places to procure these items in bulk, how to transport them, where to store them and finally how to distribute efficiently to the two charities.
With a fortnight to go before Christmas Day, Operation Bulk Buy was launched, where a team of three vehicles made their way to Costco at St. Helens. The team, consisting of David Jenkinson, William Buchanan, the group secretary and South Fylde Group Chairman Ben Gorry had their list, and they checked it twice, knowing they needed essential food bank items, stacking four large trolleys with trays of beans, soups, pasta sauces, pasta, coffee, tea bags, sugar and nappies and huge industrial bags of rice. They also picked up a range of costly personal items such as women’s hygiene products, shampoo, body wash, soap and deodorants. Each car, packed to the roof, including the passenger seats, made their way in convoy back home to the Fylde. The mountain of food and items were stored in a private unit until they were ready to be distributed. However, a good portion of the West Lancashire Freemasons’ Charity donation remained and the charity team carefully considered how it could help the most people on a personal level.
David Jenkinson made further inquiries with Paul Caddy and Andrew Mills, to ascertain what ‘Christmas treat’ may be nice for their visitors. They both politely requested chocolates or selection boxes and David said he would see what he could organise. Without hesitation, David made a second trip out to Bookers in Blackpool to pick up additional items with chocolates and selection boxes in the back of his mind. With the Land Rover loaded, the charity steward was able to procure 150 boxes of Cadburys selection boxes, as well as 120 mince pies.
David said: “We were fortunate to have our very own John Hardman, South Fylde Group Membership Officer, working closely with Brenda Blackshaw, who is also involved in community projects around Lytham and St Annes. John and Brenda had both personally made requests to the South Fylde Group requesting support for mince pies for the local homeless community, so it was nice to include their charities as part of this process.”
Not content with the impressive amount of much-needed help that the West Lancashire Freemasons’ Charity budget would provide, David continued: “With only a day left before distribution, and still a small amount of the West Lancashire Freemasons’ Charity budget left, I planned on buying as much fresh produce as I could to support the extremely generous donation of £250 worth of fresh turkey to the Café by Lee Munro of Masonic Catering Events. We were able to purchase 20kg bags of local potatoes and carrots from Fleetwood Produce Ltd, Thornton-Cleveleys. After hearing it was for our local food banks, they very kindly donated additional sacks of potatoes, carrots and brussels sprouts. We knew that this produce would go perfectly with Lee Munro’s Christmas turkeys. The next day would see the start of a mammoth operation of distributing the food in store.”
If ever this phrase was appropriate, the day of distributing the goods that had been bought and stored was it. The pinnacle of the mission. The big day had arrived when the South Fylde Group could proudly hand over the food bank items. With only six days to go before Christmas Day, both charities were extremely busy, so the timings had to be right. The South Fylde distribution team consisted of David Jenkinson, Jon Borris, Deputy Group Charity Steward and Peter Grihault, Assistant Group Strategic Publicity Officer. Wesley’s Café was the first charity to receive their food bank items which filled four cars. As the team helped load the cars, Paul Caddy, the chairman, noticed the tower of selection boxes and beamed with happiness, knowing how many smiles they would put on children’s faces. The team at Wesley’s Café were overwhelmed by the sheer volume of food that the group had managed to donate and joked that they may struggle store it all.
The icing on the cake was that the South Fylde Group were also going to make a cash donation of whatever was raised on their ‘GINgle All the Way’, Festive Gin Tasting Evening being held at the Palace St Annes. As the last load for Wesley’s Café set off, the SFG Charity Team needed to make headway to Helping Hearts to meet up with Andrew Mills and his team of volunteers.
David Jenkinson said: “As the distribution team arrived, they were taken aback by the mass of people swarming the entrance to the New Life Community Centre. Huge groups of families queued patiently out the doors and the line overflowed, snaking down the street. As the SFG team carried sacks of food into the centre, they were met with row upon row of families and locals, with some tables four or five deep, waiting for their food bags. The Helping Hearts volunteers worked hard handing out the bags, and were rapidly running out of produce just as the SFG team arrived. The demand was huge, bigger than they had anticipated. The sense of urgency was evident as volunteers tore open the sacks of potatoes as the SFG team passed them over the counter, passing them to volunteers making up the bags. Helping Hearts rushed to fill the food bags and quickly handed them out to the waiting families. We continued to bring in more of the food bank sacks and helped distribute the bags. From the Land Rover, the team helped to fill the Helping Hearts van ready for their next day.”
Peter Grihault, Assistant Group Strategic Publicity Officer said: “It was particularly touching to be thanked by some of our students and their families, who we teach at school. To further our support for this wonderful cause, we held a Christmas Jumper Day on the final day of term and it has been great to give the proceeds of the Jumper Day to Helping Hearts, knowing that the proceeds directly help to support the families we serve as teachers. Andrew Mills and his team were delighted and thanked our South Fylde team for all their hard work and support.”
It was a touching sight to see families leaving the centre knowing they would have food for the Christmas period. Not only had the South Fylde team distributed over £3,000 worth of food and items, they had truly been at the heart of the community, witnessing first-hand the impact that the current cost-of-living living crisis is having on many families. So, as you reflect on this year’s resolutions, please spare a thought, and a pound, to help the charities supporting the most vulnerable in society, often through no fault of their own. Remember, Charity is for life, not just for Christmas.
