Community soup kitchen says donations have dried up

Sunderland Community Soup Kitchen is mostly staffed by volunteers

A charity which feeds 100 people four times a week says it has seen a huge drop in donations since the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Sunderland Community Soup Kitchen was founded in 2019 to try to combat hunger and poverty in the city.

It costs approximately £11,000 a month to run, but the charity it is now having to regularly dip into its reserves.

Founder Andrea Bell said "people want to help, they just don't have any money spare".

The charity has an allotment where much of the food it serves is grown

"What we do has grown massively, now we also help people with furniture, clothing, shoes, tents and sleeping bags, and gas and electricity costs," Miss Bell explained.

"We have an allotment and we also offer free haircuts and podiatry."

But donations were not matching the increase in demand for the charity's services, she said.

"I think now we're a bit better known, people think we have money coming in from elsewhere, but we still totally reliant on the public's generosity," Miss Bell said.

Volunteers say they used to mostly feed the homeless, but now they also see working people too

To try and bring in new sources of income, the charity has taken over the lease of a building next door to its kitchen and plans to rent out the space as a community hub and sell vintage clothing.

"There have been nights when I've been awake and thought how can we keep going?" Miss Bell said.

"But the work we're doing is just too important, so the charity is not going to close on my watch, that's for sure."

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