Your World of Legal Intelligence
 United Kingdom | +44 (0) 20 7284 8080

The foodies cooking up hundreds of Christmas meals for Londoners in need this Christmas

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
Published date21 December 2020
Date21 December 2020
Furloughed Foodies were this morning December 21 sending out festive deliveries of veggie roast dinners with stuffing to households across Kensington and Chelsea.

One of its founders, Chloe Hall, 27, told us how she helped grow the grassroots organisation during the first lockdown to a point where it was feeding NHS staff at 15 London hospitals.

“All the way back in April I was working for a tech start-up and was furloughed,” said Ms Hall, who lives in Holland Park.

“An old housemate asked if I wanted to help make food for NHS workers. We realised lots of people who were furloughed had nothing to do. We decided to make an Instagram account and the Furloughed Foodies website.

“We were inundated with messages almost overnight and it snowballed.”

She continued: “We raised £30,000 and had 500 volunteers in total, often helping for stints of a few weeks. If they lived near a delivery location we would ask them to cook some meals, and a volunteer driver would take them to a hospital.”

The group took a break from the end of summer as the number of patients began to dwindle, and after Ms Hall found a new job.

But she and three organisers – Piers Cotte Jones, Will McFadden and Maia Ramzan – have restarted Furloughed Foodies for December, this time with the aim of helping families who will struggle to put food on the table.

Local charities that have been overwhelmed with demand have helped them identify households who will receive the Foodies’ home cooked dinners.

Outside of their own working hours, “whenever we can fit it in”, they have rounded up 40 volunteers and coordinated the operation via Zoom.

“This time because it’s on a...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT