Newbury Soup Kitchen

Newbury Soup Kitchen opened in January 2017, since then a wonderful team of volunteers have worked with vulnerable clients each week. Through building caring relations, they have slowly gained clients trust and helped them to gain self-worth and confidence. Our volunteers’ range in experience and qualifications from a retired GP, trained nurses, a paramedic, Dual Diagnosis worker, psychologist, to people who are experienced in the field of homelessness and addictions. The Community Support building will be set up to help prevent loneliness and isolation along with support and education. In May 2020 we were unexpectedly offered a long term/temporary building to use as an Operations Centre. This building started as an office block and we have transformed it into a wonderful kitchen. Until life gets back to normal, we are feeding our clients on a delivery basis to encourage social distancing and self-isolation. We are providing up to 300 meals a week. Once lock down has eased we will move to a provide a takeaway service and hopefully eventually back to our sessions at the Salvation Army hall. Our dream is a permanent building to encapsulate everything but in the meantime, we are very happy with our operations centre. 

After an interview on BBC Berkshire Dan and the Team at MCFT were introduced to Meryl Praill who is the founder and Operations Manager of Newbury Soup Kitchen and the charity HAVEN (West Berkshire).

"The lovely MCFT guys have supported us by donating and installing many kitchen appliances, work services and even a freezer. Without their support, generosity, and kindness we would not have been able to achieve and end up with such a wonderful space to prepare nutritious and healthy meals to people locally in food poverty. They have worked tirelessly even in lockdown to get us up and running for which, we are very grateful".