City Grub Hub helping its community during the Covid-19 crisis

A FOOD HUB “dreamt up” by members of a Coventry community expect to see more hungry mouths in the coming months.

Henley Green Grub Hub was the first food hub to be set up in the city and helps hundreds of families living on the breadline.

The coronavirus pandemic has hit the area hard, but families were struggling here before, and recent months have only exacerbated the situation.

Issues like feeding home-schooled children, being made redundant or on furlough, or dealing with debt and abuse, are all additional hardships families here have had to contend with since Covid-19 arrived.

Henley Green was the first food hub in the city to link up with Fare Share, a charitable food redistribution network which helps tackle food poverty by supporting community centres running grub hubs, food banks and social supermarkets.

Grub Hub manager Dianne Williams told us when we visited the service this week.

When we visited Henley Green Grub Hub on a sunny weekday morning, families were queuing at the welcome desk to pick up their food parcel.

It was relaxed and friendly, and volunteers were hard at work packing parcels in anticipation of the 120 or so families who visit the Hub every week.

Dianne Williams is CEO of Moat House Community Trust and manager at the Grub Hub. She said: “We dreamed it up, and residents helped deliver it, and funnily enough, the model hasn’t changed, we’ve tweaked it, but fundamentally we just listened to what people were saying.

“Since the very week we started Grub Hub, there hasn’t been a week where there hasn’t been someone new join, they don’t all come every week, some come for crisis in their life.

“We don’t means test it, because it’s about dignity.

“If we’re helping people afford quality food then hopefully we’re helping them preventing them from getting to debt.”

Their main bulk of supply comes from food charity Fareshare, who provide around half a tonne of fresh and tinned food every week to go into the food parcels.

The centre is brimming with trolleys full of fresh and tinned food ready to go into parcels that week, and thanks to Sky Blues in the Community, they have managed to continue deliveries to shielding families.

Heroic efforts at the height of the pandemic saw the Grub Hub transform their service to delivery only for 24 weeks. With the help of Sky Blues in the Community they carved up the neighbourhood into four delivery routes and delivered parcels to 150 families every week.

Former Sky Blues player at Sky Blue in the Community Dave Busst said: “When Covid hit we were here that week, and then the food started coming in and so we just started carrying on. As a community charity part of our values and objectives are to make a difference in the community and straight away from day one, five of our staff members came down here asking ‘right what needs to be done, what help do you need from us’?”

It soon became apparent they would need to start delivering to vulnerable and shielding families, which is where Dave and his team came in:

“And then it needed to be delivered because people couldn’t come out their houses and that’s where we came in, we had a couple of vans and member of our staff.

[We were] thinking it was only going to be for one month two months, we then hit the 40 week mark .”

Welcoming people at the sign in desk, volunteer Tracy Galvin said: “You see so many people from different backgrounds in the community, it’s nice to give something back to them.

“Some people are quite embarrassed but we tell them they shouldn’t be embarrassed and we’re here to help.”

And what would the community do if the Grub Hub wasn’t here? “It would put a lot more pressure on food banks, and I think our community would suffer quite a big deal.”

People know each other here, they anticipate potential problems that families might be getting into, and they are trusted port of call for residents.

Dianne said: “You start to address loneliness and isolation, people grow in confidence and then become volunteers. They might then go on to work in the hospital or do an access course to become a nurse.

“So much can be achieved in a community, you can make people feel safer.”

Doug Jones, aged 70, walks up from the neighbouring Manor Farm estate every week to pick up a parcel for him and wife Carol.

Doug said: “Oh it’s been a god send, not going out and my wife is 80 and I’m 70, Tracy and Dianne they do a fantastic job you never have to go without anything, it’s brilliant.

“It makes a hell of a difference, knowing we never have to go without anything.”

Vimbayi Maliko has been coming to the Hub for around a year, and is there with her little ones to pick up a food parcel. She said: “It helps massively because especially when Covid happened it was definitely difficult to get into shops.

“It would help throughout the week and it also helps with the money.”

Another resident who came to pick up a parcel with her son, but wanted to stay anonymous, said: “Coming here has been a life saver, it’s taken the edge off, [the] stress off, I know that at least every week we can manage.”

And Dianne and the team expect to see more people use the Grub Hub as the economic impact of pandemic continues to present itself.

They have linked up with Coventry Independent Advice Service to provide debt advice every week to families.

“We couldn’t have done what we’ve done without Fareshare, you wouldn’t believe it until you see it, the amount of stuff we get.”

She added: “We’re classed as a member of Fareshare, and we do pay, but it’s based on weight, depending on what size or weight you choose, it works out at 35p a kilo for delivered food.

“It’s completely random, it has two major advantages, one is that it obviously it’s getting food out at a cheap price, but the second thing is otherwise it would have gone to landfill and would have had an environmental impact.

“Wholesalers and supermarkets used to dump their food and pay a landfill fee but now they redistribute it through Fareshare and then redistribute it through community organisations.”

The Hub has set a blue print for the city’s food response, and as a result all ten social supermarkets in Coventry are now linked with Fareshare.

“It is really important that people know they can rely on us” Dianne said.

“This is not just holiday hunger, it’s all year round.”