Acknowledgements
I am grateful to all the volunteers of Preston’s Promise, Frenchwood Community Primary School in particular the Head teacher Cath Antwis and the School Business Manager Hameeda Patel, Adam’s Rasoi in particular Imran Ahmed, Moulana Hanif Dudhwala, Zingas, DesignA – Atiyah Bhayat, Advent Print and Preston City Council.
Generous support from a local business who wishes to remain anonymous.
The invaluable contributions of the following Preston’s Promise Trustees and volunteers must be noted:
Mrs Tasneem Batan
Miss Shenaz Munshi
Mrs Asma Kantharia
Mrs Aysha Patel
Mrs Rukshana Vorajee
Published June 2021
Shenaz Munshi
Trustee & Chair Preston’s Promise
Eat in to Help Out Ramadan 2021
The purpose for Preston’s Promise is first and foremost to please Allah.
As the pandemic continues, we have decided our focus this year is going to be the community of Preston who have been hit the hardest and suffered enormously including losing many valuable and much loved members of the community.
All of the Service Users (SUs) who accessed our support this year have been negatively affected by the pandemic.
Many of our seniors 65+ are either living on their own or as a couple. Their children are unable to provide complete support and many who are able to provide support, also need some respite as they have their own families and work to juggle.
Some of our SUs are clinically vulnerable or told to shield/isolate or have a disability although they are financially stable but unable to access and enjoy home cooked, culturally appropriate food.
Many of our SUs are single parents, individuals or families who are struggling financially and unable to provide tasty, nutritious meals.
Methodology
We create an online nomination form which captures information pertaining to the SU including their relevant details. Service users are mainly nominated by family, friend or neighbour and some self-nominate.
Each one is then contacted and the campaign is explained to them as well as establish whether they meet the criteria.
We received 132 nomination forms of which 67 forms were accepted and 65 were rejected. The rejected forms are mainly because they are duplication or individuals/families who do not meet the criteria.
67 forms accepted included:
Individuals 65+: 12
Couples 65+: 16
Families: 25 (88 individuals altogether)
Disability: is included in the above figures as they met more than one criteria.
Our aim is to provide approximately 70 meals per session, 4 times a week. So each of the above group will receive a hot cooked meal twice a week on either Saturday & Monday or Sunday & Wednesday.
A local businessman (who wishes to remain anonymous) and his team of cooks and volunteers donated 140 meals per week throughout Ramadan so this covered 2 of our 4 days per week of support. All of these meals are cooked by the local businessman’s team with much love, passion, dedication and detail.
Another local takeaway business who also wishes to remain anonymous, provided a meal of finger licking, spicy, chicken fillet burgers with chips and a can of soft drink. This meal also went down a treat.
Preston’s Promise ordered Indian food from Blackburn based caterers Adam’s Rasoi. As we have used them for the last few years, we not only have a good relationship with them but we also enjoy special discounted rates and surprise extras which Adam’s Rasoi supply us with free of charge and always with a smile.
Implementation
Preston’s Promise works closely with Frenchwood Community Primary School who let us use their premises for our campaign.
We map out an optimum route to give to all drivers. We need a maximum of 7 teams of driver/buddy and minimum of 4 in order to ensure the food is delivered within half hour of receiving the food from Adam’s Rasoi to the recipient.
A team of 3 on the ground volunteers are based in the school canteen, kitted out in PPE gear and receive food from Adam’s Rasoi. They sort out the bags with all the correct food items, allergen labels and stickers before tying the bags so contents do not spill out during transit. The volunteers count out the correct number of meals for each team and place them in trays before going out to invite the buddy to collect their tray. The buddy is also tasked to check they have the correct number of meals before they take the meals out to the car, load up and drive off to make their delivery.
The whole process; from receiving the food from AR by the team on the ground in the canteen, to being delivered to each recipient by the driver team, takes from 25 to 45 minutes in total. It is a speedy process and we all understand it has to be done at this pace in order to comply with H&S regulations.
Preston’s Promise recruit delivery drivers so that each driver brings a buddy who is either their partner, sibling or a friend.
Both driver and buddy wear lanyards & PPE and buddy also wears Preston’s Promise hi vis vest. The buddy calls each SU beforehand in order to let them know they are on route to deliver the food. If a SU fails to answer the call/or their door, then the team will deliver the food to the people on the reserve list and inform everyone on group chat to avoid duplication.
Conclusion of the Project
Preston’s Promise trustees helped by the team of dedicated volunteers, local businesses, DesignA, Adam’s Rasoi and Frenchwood Community Primary School, provided hot meals throughout the month of Ramadan to 67 households.
The total number of hot meals distributed throughout the month of Ramadan: 1181.
All SUs provided positive feedback through phone calls, social media messages, emails, directly to the delivery team or face to face to one of the trustees.
For some SUs this is the first time they have received any form of direct support and acknowledgment of the hardship they are facing since the pandemic started.
This project brought a lot of laughter, tears and smiles to all volunteers and trustees. Many lessons are learnt and we will address these in preparation for similar future projects.
