Churches in Wythenshawe partner with the local foodbank to provide breakfast packs for families on low incomes during the long summer holidays.
Every school holiday season, the Wythenshawe Team of churches has partnered with Wythenshawe Foodbank to provide breakfast packs, consisting of food and other essentials, for families in the community. The project is based at St Luke’s, Benchill, which also hosts the local Foodbank, and is situated in a neighbourhood where many are on low incomes and rely on Universal Credit. Although Wythenshawe has come a long way since Benchill was named as England’s most deprived ward in 2000, there is still a great deal of need. This is particularly the case in the school holidays when children are no longer receiving free school meals on weekdays.
The Team Rector, Revd Ian Fellows, said, "We started out before Covid by hosting five breakfasts a week for families, moving through the week across our four team churches. When Covid struck, we moved to delivering food to homes, and now we're happy to meet people who come to collect from St Luke's and our second hub at St Martin's. We have plans to resume breakfast at our Places of Welcome, but we imagine a hybrid service of hosting as well as bag-packing, so that people can meet as well as eat. It's good to be able to invite people for breakfast after all the hardship of lockdowns and restrictions."
Fr Lee Wood, Curate at St John the Divine, Brooklands, whose church members have also been helping with the scheme, added: “The breakfast packs have proved extremely popular with the local community, and we are very grateful to Wythenshawe Foodbank and our team of volunteers for making this happen”.