The fight against Covid-19 has had many different elements, with RISE Project’s community food drops being one of them. Our volunteers at RISE Projects spend their spare time every Saturday preparing food for the people most affected by the virus in Haringey and neighbouring boroughs. While we were founded to support young people and providing them with mentoring and personal development opportunities, we have had to change our work stream during Covid-19 to respond to the effect of the pandemic and its impact in the local community.
Covid-19 has affected people who were struggling before the virus the most and has made their situations even worse. For example, according to BBC research, over 3 million people in the UK are receiving some form of benefit, with 45% of these, being recent people affected by job losses and redundancies. Covid-19 resulted in the UK has seeing it’s the worst economy in over 11 years.
RISE Projects been supporting the community to distribute essential food and household supplies in Haringey during the Covid-19 pandemic. Many of our service users have reported that they are currently facing a food crisis, made worse by children being off from school and many people losing their jobs. This has caused financial hardships on families already facing challenging circumstances.
Watch here for the short news report from the BBC Somali Service: