Over Half term Elswick mutual aid provided 100s pack lunches for children in the Westend - we welcome the u-turn but know that this food won’t reach everyone.

Community larders are continued to be stocked every day with surplus food, with food from the community. Food packages are delivered to those shielding.

Increasingly it is being stock with excess food from peoples' allotments

TOMORROW!!

Community bring + take freecycle + store cupboard food event organised by Arthurs' Hill Covid 19 Mutual Aid and Elswick Covid 19 Mutual Aid Group

All items are free + available to anyone who would like them. There will also be a box for contributions towards the Elswick + Arthurs Hill solidarity funds which have just been set up to redistribute money in the area + provide people with grants, no questions asked.

We have already had lots of donations of items from people including clothes, books, toys + household items. If you are coming along please bring along any other items or food items that you have on the day. If you would like to drop them off beforehand, or have someone collect items from you, please email [email protected] [email protected] or message below.

The event will be socially distanced + people will be asked to stay 2 metres apart from each other + only touch items which they are going to take. Please bring bags for carrying items away with you if you have them!

Before the government u-turn Elswick mutual aid and Arthurs hill Mutual aid issued a joint statement on the proposed FSM scheme by Newcastle City Council.

Why we don’t want to engage with Newcastle’s Best Summer Ever feeding scheme

Background:

Over the May half-term we gave out some free packed lunches outside primary schools in the West End with Elswick Mutual Aid. Then a local councillor forwarded us some information about how to apply for a grant to do the same thing over the summer holidays from 17th July to 7th September. This is a scheme run by Active Newcastle and Newcastle City Council called Newcastle’s Best Summer Ever. Last year this involved putting on sports and outdoor activities for the city’s children. This year due to COVID-19 the scheme is different and seems to include the council’s response to holiday hunger. So far this is the only scheme that has been announced

Our stance:

Arthur’s Hill Mutual Aid and Elswick Mutual aid are concerned about Newcastle City Council’s response to holiday hunger. For a start the Best Summer Ever scheme is only delivering food to children on free school meals for 4 days a week over 4 weeks. The summer holiday is more than 7 weeks long.

But more so this is a really worrying neglect of duty by the council. Asking residents and small voluntary organisations to bid for grants to feed hungry children over the summer is not okay. Children - or anyone - having enough to eat should not be reliant on whether some concerned residents see this information, apply for the grant, receive it, negotiate the bureaucracy, do the training, and ultimately give their time and effort over a 4 week period to deliver this scheme - especially if residents are not in a position to help in such a way.

We are saying this because:

Mutual aid is political. It is radical. It has its roots in Black, feminist, working class communities helping each other because the existing structures are oppressive and inadequate. The half term packed lunches scheme Arthur’s Hill Mutual Aid and Elswick Mutual Aid ran was inspired by the Black Panthers’ free breakfast programme.

We do not want to condone or legitimise state neglect through the idea of the ‘Big Society’ by engaging with this scheme. It is not okay. Newcastle deserves better.

We demand instead:

The grant and the cost of training/running this programme is given directly to families of children receiving free school meals or otherwise struggling, including migrant families with no recourse to public funds. So that they can choose what to spend it on. Arthurs Hill mutual aid and Elswick mutual aid are in the process of setting up a solidarity fund which will make no-question-asked payments to people in the wards who are in need of money. Aspects of the best summer ever scheme are nice and relevant to the challenges of COVID-19 restrictions. Handing out activity packs and checking in with people over fences is a great idea. Employ people to do this.

Arthurs Hill Mutual Aid & Elswick Mutual Aid