October has been a month full of preparation and anticipation of the coming busy Christmas season. The Pantry continues to see growth and on the 6th November, we hosted a visit from the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, London Assembly members Florence Eshalomi and Tom Copley, and Barry Hargrove, Deputy Mayor of Southwark. The Southwark Foodbank has had an incredibly successful Harvest season, with schools and churches from all over the borough donating food. The HOurbank Creative Writing Workshops have kicked off with a wonderful group of creatives. The Women’s Service is running a Shark Cage Course this month. We welcomed new members of staff into the Women’s Service, Employment and Central Teams, as well as saying goodbye to one of our employment staff.

Peckham Pantry

On Wednesday 6th November, we hosted a visit from the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, London Assembly members Florence Eshalomi and Tom Copley, and Barry Hargrove, Deputy Mayor of Southwark. During the visit, they saw the Pantry in action, had a chance to meet members and discuss how the pantry is positively impacting the community in the area by providing affordable food to those on low income and building a community in St Luke’s.

Southwark Foodbank

We have been overwhelmed with the generosity of local schools, churches and businesses in October, especially over the Harvest period and have seen many hundreds of kilograms of food coming in from many people. We want to say a huge thank you to all have supported us with food donations, money donations and volunteering over this period. [if !supportLineBreakNewLine] [endif]This month, we also have a number of supermarket collections and are in the run up to our National Collections at Tesco for Christmas on the 21st, 22nd and 23rd of November. We are still looking for volunteers for Saturday the 23rd November, so if you would like to give a couple of hours to volunteering with us, please email foodbank.support@pecan.org.uk.

We held our regular Foodbank Friday collection at London Bridge on the 25th October and raised £1954.95 for the foodbank! Thank you to all who supported us!

Employment

This month, our Journey2Work programme is running IT skills training to help those who need to improve their IT skills to help their employability. It’s a course we hope to repeat, as we have had a positive response and recognise the need for better digital skills in many of or clients. [if !supportLineBreakNewLine] [endif]We’ve started a new round of SIA training which has had a very positive response and many attendees.

HOurBank Creative Writing Workshop

The Creative Writing Workshop has been a wonderful success with a steady core of people attending for the whole 8 weeks. We will be running the workshop again in October, so if you are interested in improving your creative writing skills, then get in touch with HOurbank to sign up! [if !supportLineBreakNewLine] [endif]The dates for the next 8 week workshops are: Date: Every Thursday from 17th October – 12th December Time: 10am – 1pm Location: Pecan, 121 Peckham High Street, SE15 5SE

The sessions are FREE. If you wish to continue, we will invite you to join HOurBank

Please email hourbank@pecan.org.uk for more information and to register your place or see the website for more information

Women’s Service

This month, the Women’s Service has been running a Shark Cage Course with some members. The course has been going well with many women attedning each week. [if !supportLineBreakNewLine] [endif]If you would like to get in touch to find out more about where the space is and what services we offer women, please contact Sophia sophia.benedict@pecan.org.uk

Staff

At the start of October, we said goodbye to Janine, our employment engagment broker. She has spent many hours on outreach making connections with employers. We wish her all the best! [if !supportLineBreakNewLine] [endif]The Women’s Team welcomed Cat, our new Community Advocate who is working with women in the community.

In our Employment Support team, Sandrae started this month as our new Employment Support Caseworker, working with both Family Works and Journey2Work. [if !supportLineBreakNewLine] [endif]The Central Team welcomed Moshoodat, our Finance Assistant, who is helping with keeping the central services running smoothly and providing support to our Finance Manager.

Events [if !supportLineBreakNewLine] [endif]We will be releasing an events newsletter in January, with our whole line up of events for the year, so if you would like to receive that newsletter, get in touch.

If you have an event that you are taking part in and would like to nominate us as your charity, and for all event related enquiries, please get in contact with carey.evans@pecan.org.uk.

Volunteer Opportunities

The Southwark Foodbank is looking for volunteers to participate in our Christmas supermarket collections at Tesco on the 21st, 22nd and 23rd November. If you would like to give a few hours of your time, please get in touch with Rose at foodbank.support@pecan.org.uk [if !supportLineBreakNewLine] [endif]The Peckham Pantry is looking for friendly, helpful volunteers to help run our community pantry on Wednesdays for 3 hour shifts, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Food Safety Level 2 is desirable but if you do not have it, we will provide the necessary training.

Our reception is manned by volunteers and we are looking for more people willing to give a morning or afternoon of their week on a regular basis to be a part of the day-to-day running of Pecan’s office. [if !supportLineBreakNewLine] [endif]If you are interested in finding out more information, please email Beatrice at beatrice.ocero@pecan.org.uk