St Paul's Marylebone
An exciting opportunity to step into the innovative role of
Food & Wellbeing Project Manager
at St Paul's Church, Marylebone,
serving the Lisson Green & Church Street Estates, Westminster.
St Paul's created the 'Food & Wellbeing Project' in 2016 after receiving a significant grant from the London Evening Standard 'Food for London' appeal. The grant and a partnership with FoodCycle Marylebone enabled us to establish a weekly community meal for around 80 people - offering a space to be, to enjoy friendships, combat loneliness, bring an end to food poverty & food waste and most of all create a place of joy, laughter & conversation over a good meal!
Over the past four years the Food & Wellbeing Project has grown dynamically. We have welcomed hundreds of people through our doors to enjoy meals together; we have a database of over 600 volunteers; strong relationships with local community groups, shops and businesses; and exciting hub projects branching off from the original community meal - these include a weekly 'soup kitchen' working alongside adults with learning difficulties to cook soup for an over-50s drop-in; an exciting new venture with a youth sports hub emerging through lockdown; and 'Hearts to Homes' a new project offering support to the most isolated in our community during the Covid-19 pandemic. During lockdown we successfully moved our community meal to a delivery service, utilising our volunteer network to deliver hundreds of meals, a friendly phone-call and shopping to those most in need.
This is an exciting time to join the team at St Paul's!
We have recently been awarded funding from Church Street Ward Neighbourhood Keepers Fund, as well as additional funding, to grow the role over the next five years.
St Paul's serves the Lisson Green and Church Street Estates, a wonderfully diverse community in the heart of Westminster. The estates have experienced considerable hardship over the years - with high unemployment, food poverty, inadequate housing, mental illness & ill-health, high levels of isolation & loneliness among the older generation, as well as challenges in food poverty and child poverty among local families - even with these immense challenges there is an energy & dynamism in this community and a desire to flourish and celebrate the gifts that people bring.
The Food & Wellbeing Project at St Paul's offers a space for hope, wellbeing & friendship in this community and we pray that you might consider joining us!