South Belfast Foodbank is TEN years old!

Over the coming weeks and months, we look back and reflect on the past 10 years, the journey we have been on and where we have ended up. We also explore the future and ask, ‘What’s next?’ We hope to have a few various people add their voice to our story too.

Part One – “The Beginnings” by Bruce Gardiner-Crehan:

Back in 2011, I accepted the role of community worker in City Church Belfast, with my role placing me in a unique position to see the needs in our community. The area that City Church is located is inner South Belfast and The Holylands, which is well known for its deprivation and obvious housing needs and other social inequality issues.

During my time as the community worker, many people were knocking on our church door and asking for money to go towards food. One story stood out: an older gentleman, clearly vulnerable with various issues including bad health knocked on the door and I got to know him. Initially, he just wanted a sandwich and whilst I was happy to get him one, some visits later his request for the usual sandwich turned into a mini food shop. I realised he needed far more than just a sandwich.

Soon, more people were knocking on our church door and asking for money to go towards food, so we decided we had to do something; I could not feasibly continue to spend my own money or indeed the Churches money on buying food for people. So as a Church leadership team we decided to investigate the foodbank model.

The pastor of City Church at the time tasked me with leading this project, and the thought of organising a food ministry resonated deeply with me – The Bible is clear on the importance of justice for the poor and needy and a call to action, so I was excited at the prospect of doing something.  During the winter of 2013/2014 I spent around 6 months visiting various ‘foodbanks’ – some official ones (Newtownards foodbank – the first Trussell foodbank established in Northern Ireland) to other independent ones, right down to the ‘ad-hoc’ foodbanks- a lady running her foodbank from her kitchen. I also spent time asking key people in the community of South Belfast this simple question: “Does South Belfast need a foodbank?” The overwhelming response was “Yes.” After much thought, we decided to partner with The Trussell Trust – now named Trussell, the umbrella Anti-poverty organisation overseeing well over four hundred foodbanks across the UK.

South Belfast Foodbank was set up in April 2014 in a response to the local need, but we did not open our doors until October 2014. There was a lot of work that needed to be done to get us open.
After months of preparations, prayer, thought, reading, chatting, meeting groups and meeting with other churches and sensing the very real need, we opened our doors in October 2014. Our first home was in Mornington Community Project on the Ormeau Road – having stumbled upon the building during a prayer walk. I contacted the people that owned that building and permission to use the building for our foodbank was granted.

Looking back to that time, a few highlights stand out for me: in spring of 2014 I gathered a meeting of people interested in helping collaborate on this Foodbank, and some amazing people turned up who ended up being such a key part in getting the foodbank up and running – who became SBFB’s first ever volunteers. Little did I know just how important volunteering would be to the foodbank.

Then in July 2014 we ran our first ever 3-day Tesco food collections, in Newtownbreda and Lisburn Road respectively. We spent 3 days in both stores, asking shoppers to buy an extra item or two, collecting food, and then we did our best in getting the food put away and stored. This food formed a huge part of the initial food that was to be in our ‘warehouse.’ We had taken a small but key step in preparing to help people. It was a tiring but exciting time.

After more work and planning, we officially opened our doors on 6th October 2014, over at Mornington Community Project. Little did we know just how needed the foodbank was going to be in South Belfast.

The first few weeks we were noticeably quiet, but then gradually, as word got out and as partnerships occurred with frontline agencies, we began to see people coming to us for help with food.

Watch this space for further stories of our early days and how we got to where we are now. 

Back to News