Sunderland Community Soup Kitchen has been nominated in The BIG Christmas Giveback with £1500 in Sunderland Gift Cards a possible prize – and they need your nominations to win.
A Sunderland charity that supports people experiencing homelessness, hunger and poverty has been nominated in a national competition, The BIG Christmas Giveback, which aims to shine a light on the positive work happening in local communities.
Sunderland Community Soup Kitchen, located on High Street West, provides a range of services for those in need including meals and clothing. Their kitchen, Albert’s Place, offers meals for £1 or free of charge. TriBeCa, their community hub is a warm space and educational facility. The hub has sessions for alcohol issues, educational programs including cooking, energy advice, CV writing and employment advice. An in-house seamstress carries out repairs and alterations alongside making items raise funds, and regular cream tea fundraisers are hosted.
The charity is behind Funky G on East Cross Street, which sells pre-loved clothing, and has a mobile horsebox ‘Davy’ which distributes food, hot chocolate and tents in Sunderland city centre twice each week. Sunderland Community Soup Kitchen also operates two allotments, growing fruit and vegetables for free distribution and to use in Albert’s Place kitchen.
Andrea Bell is the CEO of Sunderland Community Soup Kitchen and said: “Sunderland Community Soup Kitchen is an independent charity which has been in operation for 6 years, we’ve been through tough times but we never give up. TriBeCa hub is a beautiful, homely space and it’s designed to be a one-stop-shop for meeting the needs of a wide array of people. We don’t ask people intrusive questions, we focus on working hard to deliver a range of services that are innovative and impactful.
“We have a whole team of caring people, including 46 core volunteers, who’d all go to the ends of the earth to help people, from fundraisers to coming up with ideas to help our service users like setting up a men’s mental health club and taking people fishing. The ‘Soupy Team’ deserve to win The BIG Christmas Giveback and if we won, we’d ask for the Sunderland Gift Card prize in small denominations and give out the cards to service users at Christmas.
“Our Christmas boxes are personalised to what people really need, and with the Sunderland Gift Card they could buy exactly what they want or need, from toiletries to food, clothing or a haircut. Choice and dignity go hand in hand.”
Deborah Brown nominated Sunderland Community Soup Kitchen and says the organisation is truly inspirational: “Sunderland Community Soup Kitchen is an absolutely amazing organisation that is a ray of light in our city. They had an appeal for winter clothing, so I dropped off some winter socks and the volunteers were so grateful. The volunteers at Sunderland Community Soup Kitchen are angels and the organisation is truly inspirational so I feel it’s only right their work is recognised and celebrated.
“Winning The BIG Christmas Giveback would be wonderful for Sunderland Community Soup Kitchen as they could put the Sunderland Gift Card prize to great use. The Sunderland Gift Card is a brilliant initiative to encourage people to shop with local businesses in the city, in person. I love shopping in Sunderland because you get the interaction with people that you just don’t get online. And it’s all supporting local businesses in our city.”
The BIG Christmas Giveback asks for nominations for local people, community groups and organisations who are having a positive impact in their community. The person or organisation with the most nominations in the national competition will win a £1000 Town & City Gift Card, such as the Sunderland Gift Card, with one person who nominated them winning a £500 gift card.
Led by Sunderland’s BIDs, the Sunderland Gift Card is an initiative to encourage local shopping in the city.
Roberta Redecke, Head of Business Services at Sunderland’s BIDs said: “It’s great to see Sunderland Community Soup Kitchen nominated for this competition, they do great work in the Sunniside area of the city to help those in need. The Sunderland Gift Card is very popular for organisations to use as rewards, and a number of charities also use Sunderland Gift Cards to support service users. Please take a moment to vote for your chosen individual, organisation, community group or charity in The BIG Christmas Giveback.”
The Sunderland Gift Card is part of the award winning Town & City Gift Card concept from fintech Miconex. Over 20,000 local businesses are part of Miconex’s local gift card programs around the world with over £45m spent locally through the cards.
Colin Munro is the CEO of Miconex and said: “With the BIG Christmas Giveback our aim is to shine a light on the outstanding work taking place in our communities, such as the work of Sunderland Community Soup Kitchen, a charity going above and beyond to support their community. Town & City Gift Cards, like the Sunderland Gift Card, are popular with charities for the reasons Andrea mentions – choice and dignity – and I wish Sunderland Community Soup Kitchen the best of luck in the competition.”
Nominate a person or organisation in The BIG Christmas Giveback at: www.lovelocalwin.co.uk