Food Banks across London
With over 100,000 people facing food poverty in London, food banks provide emergency food packages to local people who are in urgent need. Volunteers sort and organise food donations, preparing food parcels and occasionally meeting & greeting clients on arrival.
Will and I had a really rewarding day helping Joel out at the food bank; weighing and sorting donations as well as supporting with admin. Joel is doing a wonderful job with very limited resources and it was a pleasure to help make his life a little easier, if only for an afternoon.
Alison Parcell, Business Development Manager
Thank you for allowing Felicity time out to help at the food bank. She worked willingly and well and provided a friendly and committed morning's work at Vauxhall, entering fully into the spirit of the occasion - making the visitors welcome and enjoying rapport with the regular volunteers.
The Mission provides a free breakfast to the foodbank visitors and Felicity helped me in the kitchen where I work as a volunteer each week. Please pass my thanks to her for her unstinting dedication and enthusiastic help with the kitchen duties; She was a marvellous help and a pleasure to work with. Felicity was involved in making beverages and serving the food and our regular team found her a real asset in serving and turning her hand to all the kitchen duties.
Ray Soole, Volunteer Chef at Vauxhall Food Bank
Share Horticulture
The Share Community is a registered charity that provides training and employment support for disabled adults, including those with learning disabilities, autism, physical/sensory impairments and mental health needs. Students are given the opportunity to complete a horticulture qualification and volunteers assist with horticulture therapy and gardening tasks such as planting and seeding.
Alex and I had a great day volunteering at the Share Community Garden at Springfield University Hospital in Tooting.
The team at Share are doing an amazing job and the students seem to really enjoy themselves learning how to grow fruits, vegetables and plants ready for sale in the on site garden centre. Alex had to put his back into some digging and I helped a group of students re-pot some wallflowers. I’d highly recommend it!Emily Clayfield, Head of Content Strategy
Hoxton Trust Community Garden
The Hoxton Trust Community Garden provides outdoor space to local residents, passers-by and local businesses. It is completely built and managed by a team of volunteers.
Tori and I spent the afternoon sifting compost then taking our hard earned soil across to the garden centre, where we then repotted tomato plants, our plants included in the picture below!
The garden is a lovely bit of green space in the city, open to everyone – they run events free to the community like yoga classes, and all the produce they grow is free to those in need. You can also buy plants (like ours!) and all profits go back into the garden.
Ileana Lund, Head of Client Services
The Felix Project
This charity works to collect good quality food from suppliers across London and redistribute to vulnerable people in the local community. Volunteers work as warehouse assistants and co-drivers to fight food poverty.
Dragon’s Den
The primary school version of the popular ‘Dragon’s Den’ show, for children in disadvantaged areas to give them insights into the professional world. Volunteers act as dragons, providing constructive feedback, deciding winners and handing out prizes.
We spent half a day at the Nelson Primary School being ‘dragons’ at their version of the Dragon's Den show, helping kids work on their presentation skills and encouraging as well as challenging the products they developed.
To give you some background about the project - during ‘Work Week’, which the education charity 15Billionebp organises for the school, Year 6 pupils form ‘companies’. Each company designs a product that helps solve a problem. The Dragon's Den session is the culmination of the week’s work, during which pupils present their products to ‘dragons’ and respond to any questions the dragons might ask.
Kristina Lazarevic, Senior Digital PR and Promotion Executive
We are great believers in a little help going a long way and so we endeavour to do whatever we can whenever we can. We also recognise that time spent helping others leaves us feeling humbled and energised and gives us a grounding sense of perspective and gratitude.
Creating a meaningful impact is at the core of Builtvisible and all of our people – in and out of the office!
