With the summer break and limited donations, sadly we’ve been unable to deliver much to our local foodbank users. In the meantime we’ve been developing our links with the Newham business community and also distributing a large amount of new clothes to community groups and homeless centres across east London and Essex. We’re already investigating how new local institutions can help our friends at the Carpenters Estate Foodbank and others.
Building Bridges in Newham
It was a pleasure for us to participate in the recent Newham Chamber of Commerce Conference with an exhibition stand. West Ham United’s Jack Sullivan was the conference keynote speaker and took us through an entertaining session, telling delegates about his business development opportunities and when he ran the women’s team after they turned professional. Jack came over to our stand afterwards to meet our volunteers, and chatted at length. To be fair, Jack and David Jnr always show an active interest in our activities. We were delighted to chat with so many chamber members and visitors to explore supporting the local community, including Liz Gee from UAL and Jesse Foyle from the West Ham United Foundation. One happy visitor was Chris Abell from Tate & Lyle (we share their Silvertown building with Community Food Enterprise), who was the lucky winner of the business card draw, a signed pair of Lukasz Fabianski’s goalkeeper gloves, a prize kindly donated by West Ham United.
The WHU Foundation’s ‘Foundry’ and Kit Boost
Recently we were invited to view the almost-ready ‘Foundry’, at the WHU Foundation’s base in Beckton. This £4.7 million development has been built to support the local community, where they’ve maintained their training and coaching pitches, and added a sustainable café and a number of specialised rooms for mentoring and teaching. They also kindly donated a large quantity of surplus new kit and clothing that we have already started to distribute, with more to come. Included were footless football socks, which are now a thing.
Global Solidarity and Final Call for Donations
With the PL Summer Series in the US, it was a bonus to see that all local US supporters clubs involved are running initiatives to support their own foodbank communities in NYC, Chicago and Atlanta. Finally, we’ll be back again at the LS for the first home game against Chelsea. Any donations in the meantime are always welcome at:
www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/ironssupportingfoodbanks2024
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