I’ve been working in the South & East Foodbank team at inHope since September 2020. In April this year, my role changed to become the Foodbank Local Organiser.

The role has two aspects to it. Firstly, it is to help support the national campaigns of Trussell Trust, which is currently the Guarantee our Essentials Campaign, at a local level. This involves talking to the public, running stalls to raise awareness, and talking with local MPs and councillors. Secondly, it is to work locally with staff, volunteers, foodbank clients and the public to identify issues in the local community, in order to develop a plan or campaign to bring about change. For the local work, I am currently focusing most of my time at our BS3 outlet at St Paul’s Church in Southville.

The local work is taking longer to evolve as it takes time to get to know the community and to learn about what issues are important to people who live there, before helping them decide on a campaign issue. So far, I have been spending most of my time talking with foodbank clients, volunteers, and various other community groups in the area, to build relationships and let people know who I am.

Over the summer, I ran the Trussell Trust’s “Laying it all out on the table” campaign in our six foodbank outlets. This involved me turning up with a white tablecloth, paper plates, fabric pens, and asking anyone coming into the foodbank if they would be happy to share their stories of hardship and hope! This led to some fascinating stories about people’s lives, as well as truly heartbreaking ones about the realities of living through a cost-of-living crisis.

We were able to take two of these tablecloths to the hardship hustings for Bristol East back in June, organised by the three Trussell Trust foodbanks in Bristol. It was great to be able to share the stories with the prospective parliamentary candidates. Since then, more stories have been shared with us, and we have invited the newly elected/re-elected MPs to come and visit the foodbanks in their constituency and read through the stories.

My hope is that through this new role, we, as a foodbank, will be able to listen effectively to the voices of those using our services and use their voices to help shape how foodbanks are run.