A Team Effort: Govanhill’s Food Banks

The wooden arched of doors of Queen's Park Govanhill Parish Church are painted bright lemon yellow. Like other community spaces and business in the area, for the most part, they are currently locked shut.

However, for two hours today [Wednesday] they are open, allowing people to drop off donations for the foodbank based here. Pushing through them, the cool entrance foyer is taken up by a trestle table laden with shopping bags. Out of one spill tins of beans, bags of pasta and a pack of nappies.

The independent Queen’s Park Govanhill Parish Foodbank normally provides food parcels on a weekly basis. For now, they’re opening once a fortnight on a Wednesday for donations and then the following day for collections.

I offload my bag of supplies and am greeted (at a safe distance) by Jason McAlister. He’s been volunteering for the foodbank for around a year and is clearly in the middle of creating order from the chaos of supplies, sorting out donations that have been coming in. I ask him whether the lockdown has resulted in an increase in supply or demand:

“At the moment, we’re mostly seeing the same faces, both on the collections and donations side of things. About 50 per cent of the people we support stay at the Queen’s Park Hotel. But it’s certainly true that people have been very generous.”

The switch from weekly to fortnightly means they’re packing up bigger boxes than usual. Each parcel contains: two tins of soup, baked beans and spaghetti; two veg, two mains; rice pudding or custard and tinned fruit; pasta – with sauce or tinned tomatoes; sugar, biscuits, cereal; toilet roll; milk or juice.

Anyone can come to the church located at 170 Queen’s Drive and collect a parcel, fortnightly on a Thursday from 10am-12pm. There is no need for a referral or a voucher. Individuals wanting to drop off donations can do so on a Wednesday from 10am-12pm, or anytime between 9am and 4.30pm Monday to Friday at Malone and Fox Funeral Directors on Rossendale Road.

As well as receiving goods from local residents, they’ve also taken contributions from FareShare, the charity which ‘redistributes quality surplus food to groups working with vulnerable people’. Locavore have also given a lot, dropping off supplies, some of which are purchased by shoppers at the store, paying it forward. The lockdown has seen so many social enterprises and third sector organisations working together for the good of the community.

There are about around 15 volunteers who give up their time to work at the foodbank, and they’ve seen an increase in offers of support, not just from individuals but also other organisations. As Jason explains:

“We’ve also teamed up with Govanhill Community Development Trust (GCDT), who supplied nine volunteers to come and collect for people who are self-isolating. So that means we’ve already fed about 35 people this week, before we’ve actually opened. In total, we’ll potentially be supporting up to 60 people, far more than we normally could.”

David Zabiega, Sustainable Communities Coordinator at GCDT says they started working together in recognition of that fact that in some cases people are unable to get to foodbanks but might not have any other access to food.

“The people we helped today were self-isolating, immune-compromised, injured (one woman currently has a broken leg and is on crutches) or stuck due to caring responsibilities. They’re families or individuals who GCDT already support. Some were tenants of our parent company, Govanhill Housing Association. We had a couple of referrals from a local school. And two people contacted us via Govanhill Mutual Aid Facebook group.”

The cupboards are currently well stocked with pasta, rice, baked beans, spaghetti hoops, tinned fish and other non-perishables, but they always need donations, as stocks get used up. At the moment, they’re particularly after cans of fruit slices, custard and other sweet treats. The Southside Isolation Support group has recently published a list of what supplies foodbanks in the area are currently seeking.

On my way out, I meet Lucy Hughes, a policy officer at Who Cares? Scotland. She lives by Queen’s Park and saw the call out for donations on the Southside Isolation Support Facebook group. She picked up a bag of supplies from the local shop – tinned food, sugar, spaghetti and the like. She says it’s the first time she’s donated goods directly to the foodbank:

“I saw the call out and just wanted to do something to help. I work for a charity so have been signposting and offering support to care-experienced young people through my work, but it’s nice to be able to do something for people on my doorstep.”

The Queen’s Park Govanhill Parish Church Foodbank is just one of the local services providing food parcels to those in need. The Al Khair Foundation, Refuweegee, and Glasgow South East Foodbank have all also been providing parcels and emergency support. In addition to these established organisations, the Sikh Food Bank has also recently been set up, providing food parcels from outside the Gurdwara every Wednesday. More info here.