Greenwich Foodbank has been helping thousands of people in south-east London who need emergency food supplies in times of crisis. Many individual stories from the food bank have been featured here during the past year. In the four months since April, food has been given to 2,000 people and the network of foodbanks is on target to help 6,000 people this year.
Today one of those visitors was “Jenny”, a single parent with three children aged 16, seven and five. She can’t afford to buy food because her family has been affected by the imposition of the £500 a week benefit cap. This cap, in tandem with the need for her to pay back £6,000 – rent arrears and the court costs to retrieve the rent arrears – has made life very difficult for Jenny and her kids. The last week or two has been extra difficult because of having to equip her daughter with a few clothes for sixth form.
The rent arrears meant she had to move out of her social housing and into private accommodation – a maisonette. This is London, so rents are extra expensive. Housing benefit pays £820 a month, but Jenny has to pay the rest of the £1,000 a month. Jenny says she could not deal with the rent arrears at the time, as she was depressed and was trying to deal with her partner’s longstanding issues with drug and alcohol addiction. She felt she had to grapple with her problems alone and couldn’t ask for help. He has since left. Jenny is now jobhunting and has been on jobseeker’s allowance for six weeks. She was given a voucher for the food bank by her younger children’s school.
The work done at the food bank by manager Alan Robinson and his team of dedicated volunteers is making a vital difference to the lives of many people like Jenny here in Greenwich. In many cases, as can be seen here, they have helped to bring people back from the edge.
Voting started on Tuesday and continues until October 10. Full details on how to vote are given below:
Please do consider supporting the vital work done by the food bank.
Greenwich Foodbank is participating in the 
Community Fund public VOTE. The number of votes cast in each community will decide how the Community Fund awards will be allocated. There are four shortlisted good causes in each community. The cause with the most votes will get £3,000, the second placed group £2,000, third £1,000 and fourth £500.
- Voters should text the word VOTE and HMJ community group code, to 61119. For example, text VOTE HMJ to 61119
- SMS text message votes will be charged at the mobile users’ standard message rate and the phone number will only be used for administration of the Community Fund voting process.
- Only one vote per community group, per mobile number is allowed to ensure fair play.
- Your supporters can also find your unique code on your profile page of the website.
- You may have to login or create an account in order to vote.
- You must have a public account so that your vote is able to be seen.
- There must be a space between #CommFund and the community group code.
- Visitors to branches should approach the enquiry desk, if the branch has one, or an available member of staff to ask for a token.
- Voters do not need to be a customer of Lloyds Bank to cast a vote in branch.
- Votes will only be counted at the end of the voting period and will then be added to the online, SMS and Twitter votes.
Ann McGauran 