Durham Freemasons Charity presents Sunderland Community Soup Kitchen with £500 worth of Gregg's vouchers

The vouchers will help clients buy bread and other essentials while the kitchen is closed for Monday's Bank Holiday.

Transcript

00:00Paul Gowand is the chairman here at Sunder Community Soup Kitchen. What are these great

00:03factors going to be used for? Obviously the soup kitchen can't open every day. There's

00:08bank holidays and various events like disorder which prevent us from opening. Getting a voucher

00:16allows us to continue to give the needy the ability to go and get fed. Hunger doesn't stop

00:23just because shops close or people riot or whatever so the vouchers is very important

00:29as another means of supporting the people of Sunderland and the community that they live in.

00:36We couldn't be more grateful for giving us another arm with which to support hunger and

00:43people living in fear and poverty and stuff like that. And obviously you guys are entirely

00:48self-funded so how important is it to have this kind of support? It's immeasurable to be honest.

00:54There's so many different charities these days requiring support from many organisations

01:01and it's getting harder and harder. People's donations and people's

01:07ability to provide is getting stretched thinner so any help that comes to us in any way,

01:13be it financial, be it a voucher, be it a volunteer, be it a bit of help,

01:18we can never say no because it's all so important.

01:22Andrew Thompson is from Durham Freemasons Charity. You're presenting these vouchers here

01:26to the Sunderland Community Soup Kitchen. How impressed have you been with their work?

01:30Absolutely fantastically impressed from the food that they provide and they're developing into

01:35something that's not just food-based but something much bigger over the next few years and we're

01:41delighted to support people who have come from a background which from no reason of their own

01:48doing has left them in a situation where they require help to get through the day-to-day

01:55management of food and support.