British Alevi Federation Covid 19 Solidarity Point16 Apr 2020
We at the British Alevi Federation have recently changed our services to a Food Bank amid these uncertain and difficult times with COVID-19.
As our faith dictates we would always stand by the oppressed and the ones that are in need.
As the pandemic hit, many centres helping the homeless and those in need were forced to shut down. With people losing their jobs, the NHS and other food banks were overwhelmed with increased demand, we at BAF decided to convert our centre completely into a food bank.
The Alevi federation is an umbrella organisation for approximately 300.000 Alevis living in the United Kingdom. Our headquarters based in Edmonton and 18 braches across the country was running huge range of weekly social and educational services. But our centres were forced to shut due to COVID-19 and we stopped all our group activities and our community centres are closed to our members acriss the country, as we usually have over 1600 people visiting weekly our centre in Edmonton alone.
As the number of deaths increase and the number of people in isolation increase and now that the lockdown has been extended the need for our food bank is growing ever more.
We have managed to raise the spirit of the communities and our volunteer numbers have grown to over 50 active individuals, receiving, packing, delivering food to people in need.
We have cycle club at our Federation, they have opened up their cycles to deliver food to those in need.
Our centre in Harringey and Nottingham has just reopened their centre as a food bank as well.
We have raised the communities sipirit and solidarity by remaining open for emergencies and funerals, this has helped us connect with local stores, supermarkets, restaurants, morrisons, the felix project and even McDonalds who have been donating food to our centres. Family and businesses who can afford it are donating food from suppliers.
Our recent slogan has been "you donate, we deliver".
We are unclear how the situation might be in next 3 months, however we are hoping the cases will be reduced. During these uncertain and most difficult times we want to be a beacon of hope to those in need, to raise their hope, their strength and be available to their needs.
We have created a 'Help point' with support from the Felix Project. This includes creating food and toiletry packs within our premises with the help of 20 volunteers. We have created a database of people who need urgent help and packs. We then deliver these packs to the people. So far we have given packs out to over 1000 households. We also provide online support and advice to people. We have also given NHS workers access to our bikes for their journey into work, to protect them from travelling on public transport. We had over 170 rough sleepers coming to our premises where we provided hot food, we now supply them pack of essential food in bags.
As more people are needing help and support, we want to continue our work and reach out to many people and families as possible with your assistance.
This will include:
-creating and distributing packs to households,
-give out hot food to rough sleepers
-continue online phone support
-continue support with Bikes for NHS members/workers.
-increasing food donations
With your assistance we could reach out to many other donars and reach out to many other individuals and families in need.
Please share our story.
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