From Our Community Organisations - Waterways Children's Centre
Waterways Children's Centre is located in Thamesmead in the London Borough of Greenwich. It provides a huge range of services to local families with babies and young children, such as stay and play sessions, parenting courses, a health visitor service, cooking courses, arts and crafts, gardening and more. Ozge Ali is the Family Hub Coordinator and says there are a lot of positives for all attendees:
“Parents love the stay and play sessions, this is a very deprived area and many families don't have gardens, or even enough room for kids to play, so giving them access to our indoor and outdoor play sessions is so good. They are meeting other families, making friends, tackling isolation, and their children are interacting. I hear from so many parents their children were not interacting, not speaking or using words, but being here has improved their communication.”
Ozge adds: “We already offer so much, but recently thanks for The Felix Project we have been able to start offering food and this summer we have a mini supermarket. I'm so proud because I have received a lot of great feedback from families, it is really helping them with their budget and increasing their access to fresh fruits and vegetables.”
Over the summer, thanks to support from Greater London Authority the centre has been receiving community distribution, in total they have had over 3,300 KG of surplus produce. Ozge said it is really helping: “We are not limiting them, so they can take as much as they want. Some families, they have got, five children, six children, even ten children and food is expensive so they can't afford to buy it. Here we are giving them free fresh fruit and vegetables and more. We also get the heat and eat meals, which are good as they are nutritious, healthy, balanced meals. Sadly, most of the time children are not eating this type of thing, mainly they are eating unhealthy snacks and processed food, but now with these meals.”
The centre said they are also offering cooking classes and that is helping people learn more about healthy eating and what to do with new ingredients, Ozge adds: “So we have had a lot of courgettes, we show what you can do, so you can boil it, you can add beans and make stew or make ratatouille or even fritters. This food is a great opportunity to introduce different food, different cultures, to other people. I remember, after one of my sessions, one of the mums, she sent me the photo of what they had cooked at home. She was saying, thank you very much, this is our dinner!”
Each week the supermarket is helping a lot of families in the community, one of the mothers who attended the service was incredibly grateful. She said after paying bills the family have very little money left for extras: “My husband works full-time, and I am self-employed and work from home. We have three children and it’s hard to do. Life is so expensive, and we are on our own, we work and pay taxes, then we pay rent and there not much left, it's just quite hard. This service is definitely helping, especially during the holidays when we have to buy more food as the kids are at home.” Another mum added: “I'm very, very grateful, I also use the food bank at Slade Green, which gets food from Felix too, but having this here is closer. It has really helped to lessen the stress and the pressure when it comes to trying to get food for my children.”
The single mum of two adds “I love meat but it’s expensive, so I always get the meals with sausage or chicken and my kids they like the ones with pasta and they always have lots of vegetables too.”
