How Leeds community network is delivering moments of joy while feeding families

Based in Harehills, it is one of around 40 trusted grassroots organisations supporting the aims of Leeds Community Foundation's Healthy Holidays Fund.

This Easter, as in other holidays before, they had planned to run activities with children whose families might be struggling without schools meals.

Instead, they found themselves at the heart of city-wide efforts to ensure the most vulnerable were fed and able to access other support service.

Like so many of its initiatives, the centre's recipe cards came in direct response to listening to the challenges families talked about as its staff and volunteers dropped off food parcels.

Its chief executive, Nahid Rasool, said: “We realised that a lot of the time, people don’t even know what to cook with those ingredients. We said we’re going to give ingredients and how to cook it. The food we’re delivering is to cook with the whole family.”

On the lighter side of things, it has inspired cooking competitions for children and the Cooking with Zaynah series of YouTube videos.

But as with all the activities offered through the Healthy Holidays programme, it is also about engaging with families who might be in need of other kinds of support.

Nahid said: “We designed activities because we know a lot of the women and girls are going to be stuck at home with violent partners and children are at risk.

“This has been such a difficult time for our service users and our staff. We didn’t leave them on their own though. The programme is one way of engaging with our community who are really struggling.”

On the other side of Leeds, New Wortley Community Centre is usually home to everything from parenting classes and youth clubs to lunches for the elderly.