The idea for the homeless project started simply with me just getting rid of some bedding, I went to hand it into Nadeem at Helping Hands, a charity I found on Facebook, and he told me that he had an idea that he wanted to cook as many Christmas dinners as possible and hand out for free to the homeless in Manchester. It’s never been done before by them for the people on the streets, they normally just take a curry or something simple. When I got home, I just couldn’t stop thinking about this idea of everyone on the streets having a Christmas dinner.
I knew through Christmas that the people passing through my salon are the kind of people who would want to help so we started collecting clothes and donations straight away. My Brother -in-Law who used to be a chef got involved, he nearly died from flu last year so I think he wanted to give something back to the people that helped him and also prove to himself that he could do something on a big scale like this. Royton Cricket Club let us use their kitchen, we begged, stole and borrowed as much food as we could, and we were overwhelmed with the level of generosity from people. As the project got much bigger than we anticipated. We got a big team of people lead by my Brother to cook and it was all hands on deck! 100 Christmas dinners were prepped, cooked, packaged and ready to go!
On the night we had 3 vans, 1 full of clothes, one full of dry food like pot noodles that people could take away and one full of hot Christmas Dinners. We parked up at Piccadilly Gardens and to begin with it was a bit intimidating as we didn’t know what to expect. You open the doors of the van, set up your tables and then there was instantly a sea of people around you. We were lucky as we ran the project with an experienced team which was crucial as you got the same people coming back time and time again, so you had to have your wits about you.
Most people were lovely, there were some that weren’t homeless but that doesn’t mean they didn’t need a meal. One old man really stood out. He was dressed in a full suit but had no teeth and no one to turn to. I offered him a Christmas dinner and he was delighted, it is this kind of person that we felt we really helped, someone that wouldn’t want to make a full Christmas dinner for themselves or be able to even afford the ingredients. Once you go into the swing of it you realised that people mainly just want to have someone to talk to. It was a massive eye opener. Many had turned to drink and were quite drunk at first, but they began to sober up once they got some warm food in their stomach. We stayed late into the evening until everything ran out.
On the night we loved it, but I didn’t walk away with the sense that I thought I was going to. I think after an ex-partner of mine got beat up in front of me very badly in front of me the whole thing of being around very drunk people didn’t put me at ease. I also found it quite sad how many people came to talk to you, more because they were lonely not because they were homeless, they just had no-one else to talk to. They were telling us they were on universal credit so you knew some people weren’t homeless they were just there but in my eyes if you needed to get to Piccadilly Gardens to get some tinned food and have a hot meal, well you can have one. Some people hadn’t had a hot meal for four days, they weren’t homeless, but they hadn’t had a hot meal.
We were still receiving donations to the salon afterwards, so we found the amazing St Cuthbert’s Church in Manchester which is a night shelter for homeless people. They don’t turn the people away in the morning, they have another day time project to try to get them off the streets and then once they have managed to get them off the street they look at trying to get them back into work.
St Cuthbert’s are constantly looking for donations for any type of clothes to get people back into work. You’ve got off the street and there is a big step to get yourself back to being presentable and fit for an interview.
