Page 32 - 370167 LP253351 A Love Supreme Magazine - A5 48pp (Issue 260) v2

SUNDERLAND COMMUNITY SOUP KITCHEN
With Christmas round the corner, we caught up with Andrea Bell, the founder of Sunderland Community Soup Kitchen, to raise awareness of the excellent work they do...
What is Sunderland Community Soup Kitchen, and what does it do, for anyone who may be unaware? We started back in 2019 because there was a need for an additional food service back then. We started
off with a little mobile unit in a church, but it just got difficult because we had to clear the church. It took three hours every Saturday night because the building needed to be used as a church, and then we had to put it all back together again on a Sunday. So, we then moved into where we are today (Albert Gibbons’ old butchers’ shop). We’re a free food service and
the way it works now is quite dignified. We don’t ask any intrusive questions if a person is going to stand
in the queue, we’ll just give them the food without any questions. So, it’s basically a free food service. We do have a food bank service, we’ve got two allotments which are chemical free, we help with clothes, we help with furniture, we help with lots of things that come our way. I think we’re slightly more than a soup kitchen, but yeah, we’ve been busy from the day we started.
And does it usually get busier coming up to Christmas with people struggling to cover the heating bills and feed their families?
Yes, of course. They’re trying to save money somewhere else aren’t they, so we tend to get people asking for help, which if I’m truthful we don’t mind. You can’t really let your family down, can you? So, if you’re just needing a little bit of help with some extra fruit, veg or some tins in the cupboard we understand that.
This year obviously there’s a lot more people struggling due to the cost-of-living crisis, have you noticed a bigger increase in people using the soup kitchen?
Surprisingly no, because the council and other
32 | ALOVESUPREME | ISSUE260
organisations have kicked in with lots of schemes and assistance, so obviously people are working better together now. We used
to have 100 a night and it’s gone down to sometimes 60 (not every night) and then one night a couple of weeks ago we had 165. There’s not really any regular pattern so we just cook for 100 people, and then we take it round to a local young people’s hostel if it doesn’t
get used. But it’s really strange. I think it hasn’t quite hit people yet because I don’t think many people have had their winter bills yet, or they are just scared to turn the heating on. What you’ve got to look at is a lot of people that we help will be paid early in December, so they’ve got to go through the rest of December until
the end of January before they get any more money. So, we know we will see an influx of people then and they have to put the heating on, so again we will definitely see more people.