Each Wednesday from 8.30am, 25 volunteers of all ages begin arriving at a small kitchen in Hendon. Their day is spent washing, peeling, chopping, cooking, packing and delivering soup and meals.

Trays of food are filled with nutritious food and soup before being packed by a production line of people and delivered to the most needy that week. The delivery catchment area spans Essex, Hertfordshire and London — from Edgware to Essex; Kings Cross to Colindale and in between.

The Giving Kitchen, as the project is known, was founded by food charity, GIFT (which stands for Give It Forward Today) after identifying a need in the community.

“We’d wanted to do it for a long time — I’d seen the need for some sort of soup kitchen right from the start, when we started GIFT 18 years ago” says founder Michelle Barnett MBE. “At that time I was the one taking all the calls and hearing all sorts of heart wrenching stories.”

She was busy with the rest of her charity’s needs, so the soup kitchen was put on hold. Renewed urgency came with the pandemic when the charity was inundated with requests for help. “People were shut away in their houses and literally desperate. That’s what pushed us into doing this”

The virus also triggered a wave of volunteers. “Literally within a week more than 1,000 people came forward to help. We had four Whatsapp groups of 250 people that pinged morning until night with people offering to help drive and deliver or take people to hospital. It was like war time when everyone just wanted to be there to help” says Barnett.

During that time, volunteers were buying and cooking meals from their own homes ­­— a life-saving solution during the worst months, but not viable going forward. Long term, the meals needed to be quality controlled for health and safety and to ensure kashrut. GIFT went to the community to fund a soup kitchen so the volunteers could come to them.

Spearheading the meals-on-wheels style operation was been Lauren Fried, who, since 2017, has mentored grass roots, food-related charities. Until last year, Fried’s work had predominantly been with overseas organisations, but in 2020 — grounded by the pandemic -— she looked to help organisations closer to her London home and offered to help GIFT.

Barnett and GIFT’s community engagement co-ordinator, Roxanne Stross worked with Fried at the start of this year, to renovate the kitchen and clean up an adjoining office at GIFT’s headquarters within the Jewish Futures building.

“It was a lot of work to revamp the kitchen and to get the kashrus licence and relevant health and safety in place. We also needed a new fridge and freezer to get the project off the ground” says Barnett.

Once everything was in place, a pilot programme was set up for six weeks (which turned to eight) from May to July; and was so successful that the charity decided to continue with the project. Last month, their kitchen was formally opened by the Chief Rabbi .

There’s a circular feel to the operation with some of the volunteers — there are 50 in total — truly paying it forward, which is a fundamental part of Barnett’s ethos. “GIFT is not just about helping those in need. It’s about mobilising people to come forward and give their time. That’s as important as supporting the community in a way” she says.

Miriam Ibgi, disabled after a road accident last year, epitomises this. Prior to her accident, she had been a driver for GIFT, but now manages the packing every week at The Giving Kitchen. She is delighted to have the chance to pay GIFT back after all the help she received following her injury: “I needed so much care and attention, now this is a way of me being able to give back to the community and feel rewarded. Anyone can help — from a disabled to an able person.”

With the kitchen (supervised by a shomer from the Federation) designated as meaty they alternate meat meals (chicken and beef) one week, and fish and vegetarian the next. Menus are created by Sarah Isaac, who started as a volunteer and has now taken on the role of head chef. The mother of eight (a self-taught cook) trials her recipes on her hungry brood of children — seven boys and one girl.

“I felt I had time, it was a charity very close to my heart, and I love food. We care about the people we are cooking for. We want them to have a home-cooked meal. We put our effort and love into it,” says Isaac. She and Fried, who still plays a pivotal role in The Giving Kitchen, work together each week planning their menus. Sometimes a large donation dictates it — a large quantity of vegan mince, for example, meant chilli con carne for dinner that week.

Currently they only have capacity for 132 meals a week, but hope they will be able to expand the venture in future, as Covid eases and they raise more funding. The aim is for more people to get involved, with potential plans that include a young professional project under which they would come in once a month and cook a meal for the homeless; interfaith projects; a mother and daughter cooking workshop alongside nutritional and vocational training. Barnett and Fried hope that ‘rescued food’ that would otherwise go to waste can play a greater role in the preparation of food at GIFT.

For more information contact Givingkitchen@jgift.org  / www.JGIFT.org