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1 March, 2019
News Story

HELPING PEOPLE OUT OF HOMELESSNESS THROUGH FOOD

Exciting news! This month we have started the construction of a kitchen for our residents.

Caritas Anchor House exists to help people to move on to their next chapters. We are committed to helping people that have experienced homelessness to take positive action to change their situation, and help them to access support and services that will help them progress to independent living.

A vital life skill that residents will need when living independently is the ability to prepare healthy meals for themselves, on a budget. Access to a kitchen was also the second most popular response in a resident’s survey last year, when asked what would most improve Caritas Anchor House’s service.

In the new kitchen, which is hoped to be completed in May 2019, residents will be able to prepare food around their own schedule, and put into practise the skills and information they will learn about healthy eating and preparing meals on a budget in organised workshops with partner organisations.

We hope that using the new facilities will give residents confidence in and out of the kitchen, help them to develop vital life skills and improve their health and wellbeing. We’d love to see residents preparing and sharing meals together too – after all, residents living here often consider their peers to be close friends.

It has been a priority to construct the resident’s kitchen for a considerable time, and we are delighted to have started construction.

Our own kitchen is fuelled through the support of others. We rely heavily on food donations, and without the help of local supermarkets, schools and community groups, we would not be able to produce the meals that we do. These donations will be available for residents to access, who might otherwise struggle to afford to purchase them.

Our residents are also currently creating an edible garden thanks to funding from the Bags of Help scheme, which will see the building of beds to grow fruit, vegetables and herbs for use in their meals.

The resident’s kitchen is the first element of the Next Chapter, the final part of our Home and Hope Appeal. The appeal has already seen the construction of 25 move-on flats and additional facilities on site, and we are hoping to begin the refurbishment of our training facilities and community spaces shortly, which will extend our support to those in the wider community.

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