Please help us to raise money to build a new Children’s Kitchen to alleviate child holiday hunger by creating a new Children’s Kitchen constructed from a recycled shipping container.  FISCUS is a registered charity providing advice & crisis support to some of the most vulnerable people, families children & young people in Sunderland.  Our small team of staff and volunteers provide emergency food via our Community Food Bank and our evening Warm Welcome Space! We also have a Baby Bank and a Clothes Bank to ensure people, families, children and young people have access to food, clothing and necessities that are often taken for granted but what many families cannot afford.  Children and young people should not be going without food.  Children should not be hungry.  Children should have access to warm clothing and shoes. Children should have enough personal essential items such as shower gel, deodorant, period items, socks and underwear. Please HELP US to ensure that NO CHILD SHOULD GO WITHOUT.

We hope to raise £15,000 towards the overall cost of £50,000 for buying and fitting out a 40-foot shipping container as a fully working children’s kitchen, seating area and takeaway hatch!  We will site the new Children's Kitchen next to our community building (which is also made of shipping containers!!). 

As well as providing much needed warm food, snacks, drinks and essentials for children during the school holidays, a new container kitchen would also benefit the wider community. By trading several hours a day, the kitchen would be run by volunteers, to raise money and pledges of meals to feed Sunderland Children in need.   There will be no rules for feeding children.  If a child approaches the Children’s Kitchen for food, we will feed them, for free.  Parents of children accessing free food do not have to be on benefits.  Too many low income and working families and their children are going without.  Parents are missing meals to ensure their children are fed.  Some children go without; some children are hungry.  A new Children's Kitchen would also provide a space for us to make hot meals for vulnerable adults and young people attending our food bank.  We would also be able to provide hot meals, drinks and refreshments for people using our evening Warm Welcome Space, saving them money on heating and eating.  We could save thousands of pounds every year by having our own community kitchen cooking space as we would not need to pay caterers to deliver food for our Warm Welcome Space. This would also allow us to run an extra evening Warm Welcome Space - open to everyone.

A new Childrens’ Kitchen would provide volunteer opportunities for adults and young people.  We would also provide Kids Cooking Classes during the school holidays where children and young people can learn to prepare food, cook for themselves and also cook a family meal; children will eat some of the food they prepare - and takeaway the rest to share with their siblings, parents and the people who care for them.

45% of children in Hendon live in poverty and the picture is almost as bad in the poorest areas of Sunderland.  4.2 million children in the UK are in poverty.  Last year, 1.3 million emergency food parcels given out by Trussell Trust Food Banks were for families with children.  52,537 emergency food parcels were given out last year in the North East for families with children.  4867 children in Sunderland are living in households who have been fed by free food parcels over the past 12 months. 

Our new Childrens’ Kitchen will provide:

·5000+ Free hot meals, snacks, drinks & packed lunches for children in school holidays 

·Free basic essentials for any child presenting

·Reduced child hunger

·Reduced stigma around emergency food by making it non-means tested 

·Encouraging the Spread of Community KINDNESS among children from a young age

·Opportunity for children to prepare and cook low cost & healthy meals using fruit & vegetables from our community garden and Fare Share 'rescued' food

·Teach children & young people ‘old-fashioned’ home economics & independent living skills

·Free hot soup and hot meals for our foodbank customers prepared with a smile :)

·A new community trading café facility 4 hours per day Monday - Friday 

·A children’s food bank donation point

·Children’s emergency food parcels

·Volunteer opportunities

·Kids Cookery Classes

·Signposting

·Confidence for kids to know where they and their family can get help in a crisis

·A trading income to raise money to cover the cost of free children’s meals and essentials