The charity Give a Gift has seen a recent soar in people using their foodbank due to the cost-of-living crisis.
In a year the number of people using the organisation has doubled to 250 people.
Hana Agha the Food Hub Coordinator at Give a Gift said “at the moment due to the cost of living, we are seeing an increase of more referrals of people coming to us and accessing our services”
“We’re seeing families that have never accessed the service before like working families who are struggling.”
This week, the charity trialled their first foodbank drop-in session. This allowed their regular clients to come and collect a food parcel to last them for the rest of the week.
The food parcels allocated are all culturally appropriate. For example, there are food bags specifically for the Southeast Asian culture or Black African.
This is to encourage people to still cook their cultural food dishes even with the food prices rising.
Chnara Salihi the translator at Give a Gift told Leeds Now, “it’s very important for people now a days with the crisis that they can get food and help from a charity such as give a gift. And they feel happy, and they don’t feel shy that there’s an organisation helping them.”
During Covid-19, the charity gave out 20,000 food parcels to people in need. However, the unexpected cost-of-living crisis is taking a larger strain on the charity.
“So, we thought Covid was unprecedented but actually what we are seeing is that the cost-of-living crisis has massively impacted our clients” said Hana Agha, “obviously the prices have gone up of foods so were seeing double, triple the amount of clients accessing our services on a weekly basis.”
Hana Agha told Leeds Now that the co-founder of the charity Rifhat Malik MBE has called this “a humanitarian crisis.”
For more information about the charity go to the website www.giveagift.org.uk
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