The whole GM-BGH Manufacturing team volunteered at the Caritas Project at the Lalley Centre in Crumpsall.
The 'Lalley' is a welcoming centre, community pantry and allotment in North Manchester. The team supports people to improve their lives via a whole range of wrap-around services, including food support, health and wellbeing support, social tariff access, Wood Street Mission referrals, Health Start referrals, utility support, accessing toys for Christmas and uniforms for the new school year, DWP (Department of Work and Pensions) benefits and housing. They're also able to refer to other specialised services where necessary.
Anne Campion, Geoff Crossley, Martin Hyman, Chris Manka, Stephen Booth, Angela Robinson, James Alexander and Venkatesh Unecha helped to put away the donated food stocks in to the food pantry. This is where customers can come along and pay £4 and purchase what foods they need – it’s a little different to a food bank.
They also helped by doing some general maintenance and gardening tasks in the community allotment, such as clearing pathways and tidying the autumn/winter leaves, moving wood chippings and compost from their own composter!
Angela Robinson, Manufacturing Advisor, explained what the team took away from this experience:
"As a team we really enjoyed it, it genuinely was a very humbling experience, to see the levels of support the Charity to go to enable users to feel valued and supported in their own community what really moving!"
