Splott Breakfast Club is ensuring that at least one hot meal a day is accessible and available for anyone living in food poverty
Against a backdrop of increasing food poverty in our city, one volunteer group is making sure that vulnerable residents in their area of town can get a good, hot breakfast three days a week, plus fresh food to take away.
Splott Breakfast Club is doing what it can to provide by running a community breakfast club on a Wednesday, Thursday and Friday morning.
With the General Election looming near – on Thursday 12 December – the topic of food poverty is once again a hot potato, especially as new reports by the Trussell Trust show that more people than ever are using food banks and being given food parcels.
In the ITV leaders debate last week, Jeremy Corbyn drew attention to the subject of food poverty by pledging to bring an end to the use of food banks in the UK under Labour leadership.
In response to the struggle to afford meals currently faced by low earners, the homeless and vulnerable people, the voluntary group in Splott began serving breakfasts on a weekly basis.
Adults can pay £2 for themselves and £1 for children to enjoy a choice of breakfast foods from cereal and toast to a full English, alongside juice, teas, and coffees. The breakfast club also allows those that come along to take food away with them, too, to offer extra help in the fight against food poverty here in South Wales.
“We hope our work will alleviate poverty and enable people to socialise and build community links in a safe place of social and ethnic inclusion,” said Angela Bullard, one of the founders of the Splott Breakfast Club.
“Everyone knows that the breakfast club is for everyone and friendships and links are built there. Volunteers from the community find a purpose, too.”
Angela believes voluntary groups dedicated to helping their local community are more necessary now than ever, particularly in the current British culture of the gig economy and short-term and zero-hour contracts.
“There are so many problems out there which can create homelessness at a stroke,” she said. “And we hope that our intervention of feeding people a hot meal and giving them fresh food to take away will help to prevent this happening to those closest to us in our community.”
Photo by Daen van Beers on Unsplash
Splott Breakfast Club can be found at the Oasis Centre on a Wednesday from 8am until 10am, in the Old Splott Library at the same time on a Thursday and at the Adams Court Community Centre from 9:30am until 11am on a Friday.