Providing Home-Cooked Meals for Hospital Staff in Ashford

Last month we chatted to Nic and Chris Kimmance, Senior Pastors at Ashford Vineyard, to find out how they’ve been supporting NHS Staff in their community during the pandemic.

“A few weeks ago we heard from someone at our local hospital, who shared that staff were so overwhelmed that they were often missing meals or struggling to find the time to get to the canteen during their shifts. We decided that we’d love to help in some way, and almost overnight The Meals Project was born!

What started as an email and video out to people who are part of our Sunday’s community at Ashford Vineyard soon escalated when the video ended up on social media and we saw a huge engagement from the wider community. People were aware of the need of our NHS staff but struggling to know how to help, and this gave them a way to contribute.

The project has now been running for three weeks and this weekend we’ll be delivering our 100th meal! The meals all contain messages from cooks and members of the public to encourage the staff and we’re receiving feedback telling us that the messages are providing sustenance as well as the meals themselves during such a tough time.

We have also had a fund set up for people to donate financially, which has been used to buy extra fridges and microwaves for the hospital, as well as all the containers, labels, cutlery and some ingredients. We will continue to provide around 350 meals a week to the hospital and are thrilled to have local food businesses and members of the public involved in showing our local NHS staff that they are seen and loved.

We have been blown away by people’s generosity in supporting the project with time, energy and money and it makes us proud once again of how awesome the people of Ashford are.”