How communities come together to change lives

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1 in 3 children live in poverty in Enfield, London. that's the 11th highest child poverty rate in the country. While 28.7% of residents are estimated to be earning below the Living Wage (2021). So local charity Cooking Champions decided to do something about it. With a little help from their community.

Clare Donovan, Cooking Champions:
We are a food-based charity concentrating on food support, education and training. It's the first dedicated community kitchen in the borough and it's something we're really proud of.

Currently the cost of living is hitting individuals and families really hard, we're just there to provide a little bit of help when people need it most.

We've been able to provide free cooking lessons for children and adults and it's a really lovely environment to be in spending quality family time together learning new skills achieving something together taking it home and sharing it with other members of their family.

Recently we've just moved our food bank here as well and on average we help about 200 people a week.

We get a lot of food from the Felix project they take any waste products from supermarkets to stop them going to landfill and it just gets used in the community so it's a win-win situation.

With a lot of the things we do food is the starting point but there's so many  added benefits that come with it. It's tackling loneliness which is a huge issue, it's helping  relieve poverty and it's just creating this stronger sense of community cohesion as well. 

We cook for an amazing homeless charity called 'The Little Things' we have huge support from Paul  Wheeler who provides all the fruit vegetables and since we've helped them we've made about 12, 000 meals for them.

Paul Wheeler, local business owner:
What they do for the community in and around Enfield, they're making people's dinners who can't afford it who are struggling , who've got mental health issues. They're just unreal beacons of shining light.

Cooking Champion volunteer:
The people that we see a lot of them have a lot of uncertainty in their life, we are there through rain sleet and snow and we are a solid and a constant in their life, which actually a lot of people don't have.

It can be very very lonely when you are isolated from absolutely everybody. We're just here to provide a little bit of extra help for people that need it.  

Local resident: It definitely helps for sure at the minute, you know with everybody struggling with cost of  living and stuff um yeah it helps, it's a good place everybody's nice and welcoming and whatever.

So yeah, it's good. I mean it is sad that things like this are having to happen  but if it didn't there would be people starving right now, wouldn't there? I think these sort of places are some of the only places people are getting food, so yeah it's a good thing  long may continue.

Clare Donovan, Cooking Champions:
Seeing the impact we're having on the lives of so many people it's just... who wouldn't want to come work in a place like this? We all work together, we really think that  we've created a community here.

So just getting to know different people from different walks  of life, seeing them on their journey and seeing what our contribution has been, albeit a small one  but we'd like to think that we've impacted people's lives in a really positive way.

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