Tag: #LoveYourNeighbour

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Ash Villages Food Parcels Project

By Alex Sanderson 

Did you know? This amazing local team of volunteers have been feeding people in need in our villages since April 2020!

How does St Mary’s fit in? St Mary’s is the local parish church in Ash Vale. As well as Sunday services, we love to serve our amazing community all week long! We host community groups – everything from toddlers to choir to Friday Community Cafe. Nearby, we work with the local Methodist Circuit to run the Chapel Project on Wharf Rd. We offer a Monday Chapel Cafe & warm hub there, host the Chapel Kids toddler group with lunch club, and provide summer picnics, monthly makes and other community, creativity and arts events. In these difficult times our most important project is the Ash Villages Food Parcels Project (and our Community Fridge opening Summer 2023). We work together with Carla Morson and a superb team of volunteers from both the church and the Ash Villages Support Circle, feeding 20-40 families every week. 

What does the project do? The Ash Villages Food Parcels Project serves our neighbours in Ash, Ash Vale, Ash Green and Tongham. We deliver emergency food and toiletries to local people in crisis, and offer a listening ear. Twice a week teams go out in the evening to collect donations of bread and perishables from the supermarkets and others shop for the best value items to top this up, to make a balanced food parcel. We add these to the food items donated by local people and then pack the parcels the following morning, ready to go out to local people in need. 

How do we help people? Our Food Parcels project helps local people in crisis, by providing emergency food and toiletries. This includes ‘baby bank’ items eg nappies. Referrals come from CAB, Wellbeing Team, Social Services, DWP and local churches too. As well as food, we offer a listening ear, and help to connect people to other sources of help, including Monday Chapel Cafe and local warm hubs. We are passionate about connecting with people to battle against the anxiety, isolation and mental strain that goes hand in hand with food poverty, not just providing a one-off parcel. The lovely thing is, that lots of people who receive a parcel later go on to volunteer or donate to help others once they are back on their feet. This community is truly amazing! 

How can local people help? We can all work together to help our neighbours. Our volunteers are amazing at what they do and we can always use more hands on deck. The other issue is of course funding. Typically we spend around £400 per week on basic essentials for the parcels, to top up what comes in as donated items. Please help us to keep the food parcels filled and keep the Chapel doors open for a warm welcome. Here’s the donations link: 

https://givealittle.co/campaigns/7a47190c-ad4e-4cf9-8662-da844101a41c

You can donate once or sign up for a regular gift. If 100 people could regularly give £4 a week we could cover the food costs! Will you join us? 

You can also donate items for the parcels direct to us. We use the app called  “Bank the food” to let our supporters know what is most needed each week. You can text or phone us and ask if you’d like more information: 07730609446

Thank you for your support. It makes all the difference to local people in need. Let’s make sure we can proudly say that in our lovely community,  none of our neighbours go hungry. 

Thank you for your support. 

Alex 

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Loving our Neighbours ❤

There’s lots and lots going on – have a look!

St Paul’s Tongham: Support for the Community

We have been offering support for the local community in a number of ways during lockdown. We had always collected for the Farnham Foodbank, but we have also been supporting local families in need as we have heard about needs and through the school. We have been amazed at the donations both of food and of money, and it has made a real difference.

We were also involved in coordinating a response in lockdowns and have helped with prescriptions, moving bins and a number of other needs for our neighbours.

We would love to look at this moving forward – watch this space!

Contact: Revd Claire clairefholt@hotmail.com

St Peter’s Ash: Care and Share Shelf

The current pandemic has been a difficult time for many people. We all want to help. Outside St. Peter’s church we have a Care and Share shelf where anyone can take food that they need or leave something to help a neighbour.

If you would like to donate, tinned and packaged food, long life milk, tea and coffee are very popular. We try to put out enough to make a decent meal. It is topped up daily. Items can be placed on the shelf or left at the Rectory door.  Contact: Barbara Rose 07761808727

Fun, food and friendship at St Mary’s and The Chapel

Aren’t we lucky that Revd Neil is amazing with food? Not only has he served socially distanced teas in the vicarage garden, and pop-up take-away pancakes from the shed when regulations allowed it, but now he has built a huge pizza oven in the vicarage garden, turning outdoor meetings into a festival of flavour!

Look out for kids in the kitchen too! During the winter, Neil teamed up with Anna and Charlie to do ‘St Mary’s junior bake-off’ & stories on Zoom with some of the kids. It was huge fun, messy at times, and they even had a dance-off while their creations were in the oven. The learning has definitely stuck—one of our 9yo girls remembered the recipe by heart and made an extra batch of cakes the next morning! (Ed.—Quick, put her name down on the church coffee rota!) Now that school is back, it’s over to Alex and the Chapel Kids toddler group who are busy planting up the Chapel garden with incredible edibles. Watch this space — they are literally growing their own fruit snacks!

Now it’s getting serious: Our very own vicar is running the Chapel Project Cooking School! Fareshare and Tesco (who give us a lot of our ‘on its last date’ fresh items for the local food parcels) have created a community chefs cooking school project. We jumped at the chance to join in and now have 15 families & community cooks signed up to zoom in and cook along, learning about nutrition, kitchen skills and producing some very scrummy dinners. We love the recipes Jamie Oliver has lined up for us, and it’s a lot of fun. Cooking along at home is fab, because everyone can see how to do things in their own kitchen. Ever wondered how to create a rainbow chilli, fry fabulous fishcakes or learn some nifty knife skills? We have been doing just that!

A huge thank you from all of us to Neil, and we can’t close without thanking Vicki Fox, an amazing local chef who has been instrumental in sourcing quality ingredients, making up doorstep delivery kits for those who need them, and building our confidence with variations and top tips on the Zoom sessions too.

Bon Appetit!     Contact:  Rev Neil: revneil@me.com / Alex: 07730 609446

Congratulations! Community Heroes Award for The Ash, Ash Vale & Ash Green Coronavirus Support Group

We have some seriously amazing people involved in the local Ash, Ash Vale & Ash Green Coronavirus Support Group. They are simply the best, and guess what? The Mayor of Guildford has recognised the team with a Community Heroes award! Congratulations go to everyone involved and especially Carla Morson who leads the group.

During lockdown, the team took on delivering care calls, prescriptions and shopping to people having to isolate or shield. St Mary’s also joined forces with the COVID Group to create a local  Food Parcels Project, delivering food to those struggling under the financial impacts of the pandemic. The recipients are from all walks of life, and our delivery list is everchanging, as people’s circumstances change in the wake of the covid crisis. As we write this there are 32 families on the list this week. (If you’re struggling and need a food parcel you can call or text 07843 489796 or 07730 609446)

The COVID group is still going strong, helping local people and bringing the community together. It’s not too late to join in! Contact us to get involved. 

We are always grateful for donations too., either store cupboard food and toiletries or donations via  ‘give a little’ to help buy store cupboard items and toiletries: The donations link for online giving is: https://bit.ly/33LT1SA Thank you for your support.

Contact: 07843 489796

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Useful Numbers – Help is at hand!

Here are some of the useful numbers you may need if you need support in Ash Vale. If you think we are missing a number please let us know.

Local Churches:

St Mary’s, Ash Vale – 07863 311165 (Parish Administrator’s Mobile)

The Chapel, Ash Vale –  07730 609446 (Project Manager’s Mobile)

St Peter’s, Ash – 01252 331161

Holy Angels, Ash – 01252 321422

St Paul’s, Tongham – 01252 782790

Continue reading “Useful Numbers – Help is at hand!”