Zenoch Community Hub

 

We are a grassroot organisation who are passionate about supporting children and young people in our community with different challenges and gang culture.

Our aim is to ensure that all children have the same equal opportunity and enjoy the same benefits within the borough. We engage with children/young people who are too embarrassed to ask for help due to stigma, instead; end up in the street with bad group, lured into gang, recruited into drug dealings, go to bed without food, feel frustrated, not able to concentrate in the classroom or being killed due to having no food in their stomach.

Due to the numbers of children approaching us to request for food from our local church food bank and my experience of working with community children during Southwark HAF programme has given me an insight into the suffering of this children and young people in our community.

Some of them shared their experience of going to bed without any food, some of them mentioned that the food at home is being priorities for the younger siblings while the older ones go to bed without food.

Hearing the stories of this young people is very sad which was partly due to high cost of living for low-income families, such as no recourse to public fund, one parent family, Refugees, loss of one parent or both, being deprived of healthy foods, healthy life style, mostly hang out with wrong people, and  faced with obesity with long time effect on their health due to the economic deprivation area.

Our Hub offers a safe haven to nurture this children and young people from the streets.

As a community projects, we offer hot meals and grab and go snacks to children and young people. Our project is more of a preventive measure for these young people and their families.

Many of these children feel confident in coming back to our hub because they know they would be fed, enjoy varieties of indoor/outdoor activities, provide them with essential hygiene and toiletries from our hygiene bank in safe, secure and nurturing environment; and there has been a positive effect on their lives. Supporting these children and young people has increased their self-confidence and self-esteem and keep them safe.