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Annual report and accounts

Read our annual review and financial statements for the financial year 2021-22.



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Catholic Social Teaching and human dignity

Watch a talk given by theologian Anna Rowlands at the 2022 AGM of our North East group This talk was […]
News

SPARK newsletter autumn 2022

Click on the right to download the autumn 2022 issue of SPARK, our newsletter for supporters of Church Action on […]
Bible study

Politics, self and drama in our responses to scripture

Chris Hughes, a Catholic priest and member of Church Action on Poverty North East, explores how the parable of the […]

We hear how Speaking Truth To Power is progressing in Southwark

Change happens when people come together and demand it.

The exciting new Speaking Truth To Power programme is enabling that to happen. 

People who know first-hand what causes and sustains poverty in the UK are coming together. Speaking up. Taking action.

The programme consists of a national panel, and two localised groups: one in Liverpool and one in Peckham in south London.

A recent Voices For Southwark workshop

Meet the Southwark project

This blog focuses on the Southwark group, and we hope it will help you to find out three things:

  1. Who the group is.
  2. What motivated the group to get involved in Speaking Truth To Power
  3. How the work is going so far.

Helping us do that is Flora Schweighofer, community engagement officer at Pecan, the host organisation in Southwark, and Esther, a member of their Voices for Southwark group.

The Pecan office: a corner high street building decorated blue, with a Pecan sign above the door.

"Hi Flora, can you start by telling us a bit about Pecan? What is the organisation and what do you do?"

Flora: “As a community charity, Pecan offers practical and emotional support to people in Peckham and across Southwark in South East London.

“In addition to direct support with food at Southwark Foodbank and Peckham Pantry, our community food projects aim to see a Southwark where everyone has enough money to afford the essentials and emergency food is no longer needed.

"And you've started working on the Speaking Truth To Power project. Can you tell us what that involves and why it appealed to Pecan?"

Flora: “The Speaking Truth to Power project compliments our work and vision at Pecan.

“Participation and community organising are already a big part of our work at Pecan, and our local organising project at Southwark Foodbank is part of the Trussell Trust’s Organising and Local Mobilisation programme.

“With this project, we aim to address structural local issues and build campaigns that are led by members of our community who have used our foodbank, pantry or have lived experience of financial hardship.”

"How is it going so far?"

Flora: “It’s going well and we’ve really grown together as a group over the last months.

“We’ve been holding monthly group discussion meetings on local issues in Southwark since September 2022. The aim was to come together to share our experiences with and thoughts on some of the issues that contribute to financial hardship locally.

“From our brainstorming and open discussion activities, we have narrowed down our list and decided on one issue to focus on for now.

“Our plans for the next months ahead are to continue our regular meetings and further develop our campaign.

“We want to be part of more conversations with local government representatives and other decision-makers to share our plans and asks for a Southwark where everyone can afford the essentials.”

We aim to address structural local issues and build campaigns that are led by members of our community

———— Flora Schweighofer

“Esther, you’ve been part of Pecan’s community organising work since the discussion meetings started last year. What are some of the issues that local people are raising and want to address?”

Esther: “We talked about so many changes that we want to see as a group: cleanliness of our borough, transport that’s affordable to all, reducing barriers to getting into employment.

“For now, we have decided to focus on easily accessible information and holistic support combining a range of services.”

"Lastly, Esther, why do you think all this matters - why is it important that people do speak truth to power?"

Esther: “For the services rendered to be effective and productive, the users’ voices have to be heard. Otherwise, it can be a bit pointless.

“When you’re not listening to the people that you serve, it won’t really have an impact on their lives.

“It’s the voices of the people that are meant to be heard, but from my own experience, it doesn’t happen most of the time. But we can make a change, and that’s why we’re here.”

A group of 9 people in an office room, facing the camera,. The middle person is holding a vertical "Church Action on Poverty" banner.
Church Action on Poverty staff visited Pecan in 2022, for a Pilgrimage On The Margins event.

Read more from Speaking Truth To Power participants and activists below:

SPARK autumn 2024

Time to scrap the two-child limit

From churches to the Government: end this great sibling injustice

Church Action on Poverty in Sheffield: 15th annual Pilgrimage

Unheard no more: Story project brings hope for change

Wanted: honorary Treasurer for our Council of Management

Our use of social media: an update

Just Worship review

6 places, 41 people: Some of the UK’s unheard election voices

Wythenshawe voices: It’s wonderful – but austerity NEEDS to end

London voices: poetry, photos and unheard issues

A church with people at the margins

Weed it and reap: why so many Pantries are adding gardens

Epsom voices: It’s a lovely place – but many feel excluded

Stoke voices: We want opportunity and hope

Merseyside Pantries reach big milestone

Transforming the Jericho Road

SPARK autumn 2024

Time to scrap the two-child limit

From churches to the Government: end this great sibling injustice

A toddler in a pushchair holds a box of rice, at a Your Local Pantry

Your Local Pantry began in one neighbourhood but now brings communities together across the UK. How did it grow so far and fast?

A toddler in a pushchair holds a box of rice, at a Your Local Pantry

For Kirsty in the Midlands, it’s a fantastic place to meet people and save a little money.

For Sarah, who volunteers in Cardiff, it has become a second home, a place of friendship, fun and food.

For Tam in Edinburgh, it has brought friendship and freedom – membership has freed up money for him to buy his family presents on special occasions. 

Across the UK, more than 90,000 people have now enjoyed the wide-ranging benefits of Your Local Pantry membership. The first Pantry has just turned ten years old, and this week, in Kent, the 100th Pantry opened.

But how did the network grow so far and so fast? This blog looks at the story so far, and shares some learnings and lessons that could help your own work. 

Particularly, if you are active in your church, it aims to show how a Your Local Pantry could help your church to bring people together around food in a dignified and hope-filled way. 

A volunteer in a Your Local Pantry hoody chats to a member. They are sitting beside a coffee table, the volunteer with her back to the camera, the member facing it.
Pantries offer so much more than food - including community, friendship and support

As a starting point, here’s a quick overview of what Pantries are, with contributions from around the UK:

So Much More: The Pantry story

We have just launched So Much More, our new report looking at the impact Pantries are having across the UK. It made for positive reading. 

Pantry members now save £21 on groceries, each time they use the Pantry, meaning regular members can save more than £1,000 a year.

But as the title says, Pantries are doing so much more than helping members save money.

  • They are bringing people together around food.
  • They are strengthening community cohesion.
  • They are reducing isolation and improving physical and mental health.
  • They are creating opportunities and hope, and loosening the grip of poverty in people’s lives.

Here are just three of the many uplifting comments from Pantry members quoted in the report:

I was able to save up to buy a bike for my son so he can get to college. I am saving towards us having a short family holiday this year, which we've never had before.

————    ————

Thanks to the Pantry I have an advocate to help me manage my debts

————    ————

It has been great to see my autistic son’s mental health improve in coming here. He doesn’t usually want contact with anyone, but he has taken to some of the volunteers really well – even walking round holding their hands

————    ————

Pantries are a remarkable nationwide success story, but the idea began very modestly, in just one neighbourhood, in one town, in the north west of England. It began as a small seedling that has grown and blossomed and spread, carried all over the UK on the winds of kindness and community.

A posed line-up of 8 people in front of a gazebo and Your Local Pantry signs
Communities do so much more when they work together. This event in Stockport in May 2023 marked the 10th anniversary of the first Pantry.

Anna Jones remembers the early days well.

She was working for Stockport Homes, and many residents were in the midst of crisis. The controversial ‘bedroom tax’ was forcing people to move or be penalised, and there were not enough smaller homes available.

At the same time, the food redistribution charity FareShare was doing some deliveries to temporary housing nearby, leading to the spark of an idea.

“We noticed a real increase in food bank use at that time, and Stockport Homes was really worried how residents would make ends meet. We started looking into different food schemes.

“There were lots of different ideas – free food distribution, or a food hall serving meals for instance – but we decided the most impactful thing would be to do a volunteer-led community food store, where people contributed towards it.”

So Much More: a seed that has grown

That store opened in May 2013 as Penny Lane Pantry, the first Your Local Pantry in the country

Anna says: “The first challenge was to try to get the community behind it, in Lancashire Hill [a group of blocks of flats in north Stockport]. The community food store was a great idea. There was some initial wariness, but we asked residents to choose the name in a competition, and someone came up with the name Penny Lane Pantry.

“We really wanted to do something that had a big impact with residents and gave people ownership of the project, and the benefit of volunteering experience and opportunities.

“It had a real focus on bringing the community together. It’s quite a self-contained area of 900 flats, and we wanted it to be an inclusive environment.”

One of the first Pantries, in Stockport. The network has grown so much more than anyone expected.

After Penny Lane, Stockport Homes opened further Your Local Pantries around the town: in Brinnington, Bridgehall, Mottram Street, and Woodley. And then, in 2017, Pantries went national.

Dave Nicholson is now on the board of Skylight, the charity that sits under Stockport Homes, but back then was working for Church Action on Poverty, tasked with finding community initiatives that mitigated against the ‘poverty premium’ – the unjust pricing structures that makes life more expensive for people on low incomes.

He was looking at the “five Fs” (food, finance, fuel, furniture and white goods, and funerals), and was looking for initiatives that could be scaled up and developed more widely.

One evening, he was chatting to a friend in a pub, The Beer House in Chorlton in Manchester, when he hit a stroke of luck: that friend also happened to know Anna, and introduced them on the spot.

Dave went to visit the first Pantries, and was immediately impressed, and the national journey had begun.

A Pantry member in a pink top takes her groceries to the counter.

So Much More than a handout

“What I really liked was the potential and how things were developing and could further develop,” Dave recalls. “I started spending a lot of time with them and with similar initiatives. 

“I was impressed that it was a member-based approach, so there was a much greater degree of agency for the people involved. It’s not just charity and handouts, which is what food banks tend to be. Also, it had potential to be more sustainable in terms of food and easing the poverty premium.

“I thought, right from the beginning, it was like people reinventing the Coop, emulating what the mill workers in Rochdale had done in 1844 – coming together and setting up their own systems.

“Church Action on Poverty started looking at the model and got some people to help, and then in 2017 we launched the Your Local Pantry network as a franchise model.

“I always thought it might take off in Greater Manchester, but I did not give much thought to anything beyond that. It’s incredible how it has grown.”

A woman takes a bag of salad from a shelf, while chatting to a volunteer.
Pantries offer so much more variety than many people realise

So Much More to be proud of

Today, Anna too says she feels a real sense of achievement in the way the first Pantries fostered a community togetherness, and at the way it has grown further than anyone could have imagined. 

“Each of them has a very different personality and audience,” she says.

“The number of people who have joined, is quite astonishing – how it has grown! Initially, we thought it would help people save money, but it has done a lot more than that. 

“Pantries have always charged, because we knew we had to be self-sustaining, and we wanted it to be somewhere without stigma associated. People knew they were paying their way, and we made it clear that money was going back into the Pantry.

“It’s incredible how it has grown from that first Pantry. I still keep in touch with Fiona, who also worked on the Pantries, and we say when we’ve seen where the latest Pantry is.

“We are still very invested in it and feel overjoyed by it. It’s a nice legacy to look back on. From small, humble beginnings and a small impact with 100 members, it is still supporting people.”

That figure, the number of people who have enjoyed the fruits of Pantry membership has risen rapidly from that initial 100. 

Today, more than 33,000 people are benefiting, and over the past ten years the total is more than 90,000. More and more communities have seen what Pantries can do for their neighbourhoods – and what neighbourhoods can do for each other. 

A volunteer lifts a crate of bread out of a car boot.

So Much More: a call to the country

Communities have shown us that there is so much more they can do when they come together, and when they are entrusted with resources and support.

Yet, at the same time, we know they cannot do everything on their own. Pantries operate within a difficult wider context, and they are sometimes hindered rather than helped by systems beyond their control.

In our So Much More report, many members, volunteers and Pantry tell of the acute damage being wrought by soaring living costs. 

Many Pantries are also now having to spend significant sums on food, topping up their stocks, as the FareShare distribution network struggles to meet soaring need. 

This should be a wake-up call to the whole country, and one that rings loudly at Westminster above all. 

Community organisations have long warned that charity is not the long-term answer to food insecurity. It will take so much more than that. Government must now step up. Everyone should have access to good food, and that means all incomes need to keep pace with rising living costs, so people are not swept deeper into poverty.

A volunteer lifts potatoes from a sack. Only his hands are shown, his face is off-camera.
Pantry members say they cherish being able to access so much more fresh food

Today, there are Pantries in all four nations of the UK, from Edinburgh to Ebbw Vale, Portadown to Portsmouth. There are particular clusters in Merseyside, the West Midlands, Edinburgh and Greater London, and smaller clusters in South Wales and Portsmouth.

About half of Pantries are church-based, across several denominations. Others are hosted by community centres, charities, local councils or independent local organsiations.

And there is so much more growth still to come… We expect today’s 100 Pantries to be joined by another 125 by the end of 2025, thanks to a partnership with Coop across the UK.

The network has spread, the membership has grown rapidly, but the day to day good that Pantries do has remained a steady constant. 

And what do Pantries do?…

Pantries bring people together around food.

Pantries create the physical space for local people to meet, and forge new relationships, swapping recipes, ideas, stories and kindness.

Pantries soften the impact of high living costs, reducing shopping bills and giving people some much-needed financial wriggle room.

Pantries help communities and groups of friends to create breathing space together, to pause and chat and think, to lighten the load together and to share ideas that can start making change happen.

Pantries do all this and more. Because, while people can do wonderful things alone, when we come together, blend, complement and bring out each other’s strengths, the possibilities are even greater.

 

So Much More: over to you...

Could you start a Pantry in your church or community? Here we provide some information about how to get started.

Your Local Pantry is a network built on the values of dignity, choice and hope. Pantries bring people together around food, leading to people avoiding food poverty, making large savings on their grocery bills, and strengthening community. 

Setting up a Pantry is relatively low-cost if you have a venue, volunteers and a good supply of food. Pantries can cover most of their operating costs from weekly membership fees.

Our team have experience in helping to set up and support 100 Pantries around the UK. We have a tried and tested plan and a positive approach centred on dignity, choice and hope.

You can find out so much more about the benefits of Pantry membership, and enquire about setting one up, by clicking the logo below.

SPARK autumn 2024

Time to scrap the two-child limit

From churches to the Government: end this great sibling injustice

Church Action on Poverty in Sheffield: 15th annual Pilgrimage

Unheard no more: Story project brings hope for change

Wanted: honorary Treasurer for our Council of Management

Our use of social media: an update

Just Worship review

6 places, 41 people: Some of the UK’s unheard election voices

Wythenshawe voices: It’s wonderful – but austerity NEEDS to end

London voices: poetry, photos and unheard issues

A church with people at the margins

Weed it and reap: why so many Pantries are adding gardens

Epsom voices: It’s a lovely place – but many feel excluded

Stoke voices: We want opportunity and hope

Merseyside Pantries reach big milestone

Transforming the Jericho Road

Partner focus: Meet Community One Stop in Edinburgh

Thank you Pat! 40 years of compassionate action

Halifax voices: on housing, hope and scandalous costs

The UK doesn’t want demonising rhetoric – it wants to end poverty

Sheffield Civic Breakfast: leaders told about mounting pressures of poverty

Artists perform for change in Manchester

Church Action on Poverty in Sheffield: annual report 2023-24

SPARK newsletter summer 2024

Church on the Margins reports

Church Action on Poverty North East annual report 2022-24

Stories that challenge: Sarah and Rosie’s health

Dreams & Realities: welcome to an incredible exhibition

Building hopes and dreams in Bootle

This outrageous, counter-productive Budget marginalises people with least

A sermon for Church Action on Poverty Sunday

Stories that challenge: Emma’s road to church

Sheffield voices: We need higher incomes and more for young people

Cost of living scandal: 7 truly useful church responses

Stories that challenge: Alan & Ben

SPARK autumn 2024

Time to scrap the two-child limit

From churches to the Government: end this great sibling injustice