“It’s all about coming together as a community” - staff at Halifax charity providing ready meals for those in need

Staff from the money advice charity have been busy preparing hundreds of frozen meals that are being distributed to people who are vulnerable, struggling financially, key workers or are self-isolating.

Andrew Sykes, from the charity, said: “One of our projects at Noah’s Ark is our money and debt advice team, there’s three of us on the team, but because of coronavirus we can’t see clients face-to-face.

“So we’ve got staff trying to think about ways we can keep people occupied. They’re still doing some work but there’s a limited amount we can do over the phone or through the post.

“I have a little online catering business called the Sykes Curry Company, for the last couple of years I’ve been making curries in my garden. On a typical week I’ll make 350-400 ready made meals and we distribute them to the public.

“So I sat there thinking, we work with a lot of vulnerable families and my daughter, who is a secondary school teacher, and she said what is really worrying her about it is that a lot of her pupils’ only hot meal a day is the one they get from school.

“So my wife said ‘why don’t we knock some food up, take it down to the freezers at Noah’s Ark and see if any families need them’.

“The food banks do food parcels but that does require people to take them home and cook them, whereas you can whack these in a microwave or an oven.

“We made 350 meals this week in our kitchen, but then I contacted the guy, who I know, who runs The Moorlands pub at Ogden, and he has donated 150 of their steak pies to us.”

The meals include chicken curry, beef chilli and pasta bolognese, and are all made using good quality, fresh ingredients.

“If you’re just sat at home doing nothing you’d go stir crazy wouldn’t you, and I’m sick to death of looking at the news and how horrible things are,” said Andrew.

“So it felt like the right thing to do was to stay active and do something positive.

“So we’ve produced around 500 meals this week and we’ve contacts from the children’s centres, social services and other places picking up bags of meals for families.

“Sometimes I think people can be really distant from the life that some people lead, and I don’t think many of my friends, for example, really understand what some people in Calderdale actually live like.

“Doing what I do at Noah’s Ark means I get it a bit, we do understand the challenges that some people face.

“It’s all about coming together as a community and remembering, at the end of all this, we are going to get back to normal at some point.

“But it would be good to have done something positive for your community in the mean time.”

Andrew said the response from the public and those receiving the meals has been “phenomenal”.

“People are really grateful for feeling they’ve not been forgotten about, because I think a lot of people who are self-isolating think they’re on their own.

“But at least if they get a warm meal that someone’s lovingly prepared, then it shows that someone out there is thinking about them.

“There are organisations that do care about the vulnerable and the isolated, and we want to do our bit to support people.”

The initiative is being funded from Noah’s Ark’s own resources, which means it can only run for a certain time unless they are given more funding.

“At the moment it’s a limited thing that we’d probably keep going for several weeks, just as long as we can until the money runs out,” said Andrew.

“We have to pay for the ingredients, we spent £250 this week on ingredients, but we’ve put in a couple of grant requests from different places so hopefully we’ll end up with some money.

“I’d really like to think we can keep this going for the whole of this crisis.

“It’s been hard work. I’ve made about 800 ready made meals this week in my kitchen whereas normally I’d make about 350.

“We’ll have another menu going out at the beginning of next week and we’ll do the same again.

“The guy at The Moorlands has offered to do us another batch of something too.”

If you would like to donate any money or ingredients, email [email protected].

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