Neighbourhood Nosh was set up by the Primrose Hill Community Association to provide up to 100 three-course meals a week to people in the area suffering from food poverty or unable to cook healthy food themselves. There are currently over 30 volunteers who give their time to make this possible.
Now that energy prices are soaring, there will be neighbours who also struggle to keep warm. As a result, the Community Association is starting a new scheme to help ease their burden. The benefits of Neighbourhood Nosh are being extended to create a drop-in café or ‘warm bank’, where people can come to get warm for a couple of hours, have a cup of tea, a bowl of soup or a jacket potato.
Food for Neighbourhood Nosh is donated by City Harvest and the Felix Project. This is prepared on Tuesdays and cooked and distributed on Wednesdays at the Community Centre. The remaining raw food is distributed to people in need who come and collect it from the open ‘market’; anything remaining is taken to a hostel in England’s Lane. The Neighbourhood Nosh cooks will be making more soup each week to supply the Wellbeing Café; the nutritious food and drink is free or low-priced via a donation system.
There will also be newspapers and comfortable places to sit, so people can escape from worrying about heating their homes or feeling cold. The café will also provide further support, linking to other services and initiating learning and mutual care, for example, cooking demonstrations, giving information on local services and identifying if people need a referral to relevant agencies. The scheme will take on a new part-time paid member of staff thanks to generous local donors.
The café is open 10am to 2pm on Wednesdays to coincide with Neighbourhood Nosh, and linking to our regular Wednesday afternoon ‘Open House’, building up to more days as extra volunteers come forward. The timing will be staggered so as not to clash with the provision supplied at St Mary’s, or the opening hours of the Library, where people can also go to keep warm.
The Wellbeing Café can be found at the Primrose Hill Community Centre, 29 Hopkinsons’ Place – just off Fitzroy Road [map here]
If you can offer any help with this project, please contact the Community Centre here.
