Community Lunch
Sewing/Textiles Project
This Project has been funded by the National Lottery Community Fund. For further information please visit the website: https://www.tnlcommunityfund.org.uk
Read all about this project
Community Lunch Sewing/Textiles Project
The project is developed keeping in mind our aim of bringing people together, improve the place, help more people to reach and important of all meeting the cost-of living crisis. We are the only provision at the moment in the area with disabled wheel chair access and excellent transport and parking facilities. We moved to our new premises in February 2023 with one-day project with around 15 clients. Soon, we had no option but to extend our projects to twice a week with 25/35 clients on each day. On special occasions the number goes up to 70. The number of clients is increasing and we are a household name in the area. We also help clients with their day-to-day problems and organise meetings with local councillors. We speak different community languages and provide warm, welcoming environment.
This innovative project starts at 12 noon with keep fit and yoga exercise session, followed by lunch and the Sewing/Textiles project activity till 4pm.
All our projects start with keep-fit exercise session, followed by lunch and the project activity. Sessions start at 12noon and finish at 4pm.
We have now established a pattern of multiple celebrations. Our Easter Lunch was no exception as we also celebrated Holi the festival of colours at the same time. Both festivals bring positivity and let go the negative energy.
Cllr Matt Morrow (Cabinet Member for Children & Young People) and Cllr Nas Asghar along with Nick Peer (RBG Senior Welfare Rights Officer - Advice & Benefits Service) and Joanna Stanley (RBG Cost of Living Project Officer - Management Trainee - Advice and Benefits) were present as our guests of honour.
Nick and Joanna joined in to see the progress of our Welcoming Spaces project as we nearly reached the end of the project. They were very pleased to note that we will be continuing the project for another year as we were successful in our bid from the National Lottery Fund to run our Community Lunch & Sewing/Textiles project and hence the term ‘Launch & Lunch’.
Cllr Nas Asghar has kindly helped us to install a state-of-the-Art cooker with funding from the RBG and she launched our Community Lunch element of the project while Cllr Matt Morrow who has been very supportive, kindly launched our Sewing/Textiles element of the project.
The Community Lunch & Sewing/Textiles project has helped us to run our project back to back. We finished our Welcoming Space Lunch project and started Community Lunch and at the same time we finished our Sewing/Textiles project and stated another Sewing/Textiles project. We hope to keep this trend in the future as well with community support.
Start of the project with very encouraging & supportive email from QE Hospital
Dear Balwant
It was so lovely to see you again today, I am sorry I was called away and would love to meet with you for longer to talk through continuing our work together.
At Christmas we gave the blankets to our premature babies on Special Care Baby Care and the teddies went home to siblings, these were very gratefully received by both staff and families.
Looking forward to the Christmas this year as we have different specialities of children on the ward, we are hoping to have the blankets as prompts for the child to know they are coming into hospital. We will give the child a blanket to take home and they will be put away until they are coming back to us. This is one of the non verbal communication aids we are hoping to use with non verbal children and I would be happy to talk to you for longer on this. I would also love to thank you and your group for the work you have done so far and would be happy to visit you all for at your centre.
Let me know what you think.
With many thanks
Carol
Carol Sullivan-Wallace
Health Play Specialist
Lewisham and Greenwich NHS trust
Safari Ward
Queen Elizabeth Hospital