Hundreds of food hampers and support at the Core of Bidston community
A Bidston based community group will share hundreds of food hampers during the festive period and beyond thanks to funding from the Household Support Fund (HSF).
Core Project Birkenhead CIC will offer the food hampers as part of Wirral Council’s Small Grants Programme, which awarded 66 local groups a share of £867,000 the support residents.
Core Project, run by a group of volunteers, will use their share, £18,300, to deliver targeted food and welfare support to their network of local families in need.
Volunteer Dee Sferazza has described the impact the funding is already having on people.
Dee said:
When we started Core in 2018 we were feeding homeless people, but we grew organically from there.
Now we offer community events, half term programmes, a social supermarket, coffee mornings, classes for SEND and mental health – and we fight food poverty. With our small grants funding we are already putting together food hampers and getting them to the people who need them most.
We will fund around 160 hampers per week during the festive period until the end of February next year thanks to the funding.
Core Project Birkenhead is a community interest company. Based in the Bidston/Birkenhead area, they help thousands of residents, all year round.
Dee said:
Every month we support around 225 households, through our hampers and our community events. On top of that we also have around 120 families signed up for our holiday activity fund (HAF) programmes, which we keep running all year long.
Dee describes the impact on communities as ‘huge, and heart-rending'.
Dee said:
When you deliver a hamper to somebody and you have their child on the doorstep, excited because they see juice in a hamper, I can’t help but think ‘it shouldn’t be like this’. When you see a kid’s face light up because there is broccoli, it just drives home how important this is,” Dee said.
We had a man come into our centre on his bike. He sat with us in floods of tears because he can’t feed his family. We loaded him up with food and we took him and his bike home in our van.
Two weeks later he came back in to try and make a £10 donation. There is a stigma attached to this kind of support but there shouldn’t be. People don’t want to be in the position where they can’t put food on the table. As soon as this man had something to spare, he wanted to give it back and pay it forward. This is family, this is community.
The group say the needs of their local area are changing.
Dee said:
There is a massive need for this kind of support. With rising food and utility prices, we have more people than ever reaching out for help for themselves or someone they know.
Our usual donations of food and essential items from people in the community have dropped. We suspect this is due to rising food costs, people don’t have as much spare cash to feed themselves and others. We’re always open to receive donations of any size.
Core Project is based in the Bidston/North Birkenhead area. You can get in touch with the Core Project team, to access support or to donate, by email at corebirkenhead@outlook.com or by phone via 07708150624. They also have a Facebook group which you can access here.
