The BIGGEST thank you and summary EVER !

Its come to the end of 2014, so its about time I write a summary of the year. I cant believe its been almost a year since I started streetlight. Crrrraaazzzy !!!!!

My first thank you is Tom.

 Tom was the first person to start doing outreach with me back in February. It was cold and raining, every week, but we carried on. We had nothing then. Tom used to cook a curry in a big pan and carry it around town dishing it out on paper plates.  We would pour coffee out of a small flask. I remember once tom made 'posh coffee' with caramel syrup and no one wanted it !

On our second night doing outreach we ended up in the police station. Long story short we broke up a fight and had to give statements, what an experience.

We were soon joined by Amanda, Christina, Keenan, and Karen on outreach. Thanks a lot ladies and lovely little Keenan !

In time we started our soup kitchen in Bournemouth Square outside Debenhams, much to the councils dismay, ;)

Thank you Emma, Thorlak, Kerry, Kaylee, Shane, Cassie, Natalie, Jade, Ally, Tracy and Tony for helping us make that run so smoothly before we moved into the lower gardens.

Hotel stays

A & P stayed in a hotel for 3 days when A's 6 year old granddaughter was on life support machine. This gave A the chance to get cleaned up and travel back and forth from the hospital to see his grand daughter.

A stayed in a hotel again for 3 days a few weeks later when his granddaughter passed away.

K & S stayed in a hotel for a night when their dog sadly died, she ran onto a train track. They had another couple of nights stay in a hotel a few months later and K was attacked and hospitalized. There was NO help from the council, social OR police. K was sent back onto the streets, so streetlight paid for her to rest up in a hotel and re coop.

P stayed in a hotel for a few nights when he was detoxing from heroin.

This is where he was sleeping when he was on the streets.

Dean was in hospital for 3 weeks with clots on his lung and leg. He was returned to the streets with again, no help from the council. He phoned us and asked us for help. We drove to Bournemouth to see him and he was so frail. He could barely walk and had lost so much weight. We paid for him to stay in a hotel for 5 days. Dean now says we saved his life.

People that are housed 

J , K, K, M, T, A, D are all now privately housed. After lots of hard work, and patience, we managed to get them all off the streets and they now have a roof over their heads and are moving on in the right direction.

The ' councils worst nightmare' soup kitchen in the gardens 

Now this is a very controversial subject. But I still stand my ground, and my argument is still the same and will continue to be. I know the council will be reading this, so lets just get this straight. I do not agree with the homeless being hidden away in car parks. Never have, never will. I don't think its fair.

We constantly had the council on our backs saying I was ruining tourism. I was ruining tourism because I was feeding the homeless in the lower gardens. The homeless should be hidden away, so the tourists and locals cant see them. Because if we hide them away in car parks then they just don't exist and the council don't have to house them, right ?! ;)

Thank you very much to Ingrid, Elisa, Sally, Bev, Esther and Paula for running Tuesday lunch times in the gardens every week. For cooking the food, serving and making all of our homeless friends happy.

Thank you to Kaylee, Cassie, Tony, Tracey, Gary, Emma, Libby, Mandy, Georgina, Elisa, Christina, Keenan, Scott, Hannah, Jackie, Alex for helping run all the soup kitchens on Saturday evenings in the gardens.

Outreach

On Saturday nights we do outreach. Outreach simply means we walk the streets from 9 pm till midnight feeding and clothing the homeless who are sat on the streets. Kaylee now runs outreach since I started working full time. Along with Kaylee its Georgina, Nicole, Rose, Caroline and Chloe... Thanks ladies, your doing a great job !

Jason !!!

Jason, and tammy, what can I say, Your both amazing. Thank you so much Jason for having the homeless in your barber shop and treating them like any other customer and giving them the most wonderful experience in your barber shop. They honestly come out looking like new men.

Thank you for cutting everyone hair at our big roast dinner and for continuing to do so all this time.

We all at streetlight appreciate it so much and P absolutely loves you !

The big roast dinner

What a success. It was hectic, it was crazy, there was enough roasties to feed a thousand people, everyone left full and happy. Thank you Karen, Ashley, Ashleigh, Lauren, Simon, Vicky, Donna, Stuart, Casper, Christina, Tom, Rachel, Ingrid, Claire, Becky, Sharon, Jason, Tammy.

The Christmas meal 

Again, such a success. Everyone had a fantastic meal and everyone received Christmas presents.

Firstly a massive thank you to Slug and Lettuce Bournemouth for letting us use your venue, for giving all our friends free soft drinks and generally being so great and welcoming.

Thanks to all my volunteers, it was a great day.

Vonnie, Nick, Tracey, Debbie, Caroline, Chloe, Rosie, Georgina, Rachel, Charlotte, Luke

Sadly this year we have lost four homeless people on the streets. RIP George, Paddie, Eddie and Lou.

Here's George.

George sadly died in April. The 'truth' about his death will sadly never be known, he was the victim of the hit and run in dudmoore lane, Christchurch. There's a LOT more to it than that though. George was a fantastic man. He was a hard worker and one of the kindest guys I have ever met. 

Auctions

Thank you everyone who has donated items to our auctions, there's so many of you to thank, and I'll be honest, I have forgotten who you all are ! So here's just a big thank you all of you. Everything you donated for the auction helped us raise a lot of money. Of course, thank you everyone for bidding and taking part.

The underground

Thank you to all the staff at the underground in Boscombe for holding two fantastic fundraisers for us. One very fun Caberet night and a ladies pamper evening. Both were very successful evenings and helped us so much.

Thank you to Maria (argan oil), Becky (brow waxing) Sandra (hand crafts) Erica (aloe vera), Fleur (nails) Jaymee (nails) Jade( make up) Tracey (reiki) Vikay ( Massage) Tracy (Facials) for all giving up your time on the night to help us raise money !

Donaters... Is that even a word !?

Of course I owe a big big big thank you to EVERYONE who has ever donated. Wether its money, clothes, toileteries or your time to pick things up and drop things off. I cant thank every single one of you individually because I just dont have the memory of an elephant, and it would take me 6 months to write all your names up. Without all of you lovely people donating cash, clothes, tents, sleeping bags, toileteries etc we would of had nothing. The homeless would of had nothing. SO THANK YOU ALL. Pat yourself on the backs. I dont do hugs ;)

Christmas eve

On Christmas Eve, Steve, Aaron and AntHony put on a fantastic open mic fundraiser at oneils. Thank you guys so much for organising the event and all the musicians. Thanks everyone who gave up their time for free. Our wonderful Dean, whos street homeless, had a set. He sang 7 songs and was amazing.

Altogether we raised £318 !!!

Thank you all.

Thank you Jason for coming down and donating £80 and a car full of clothes.

Of course, we cant forget... JOSIE AND MATT GOT ENGAGED !!!!

So thats the end of 2014 folks, thanks for supporting us, please continue to support us, continue to share our page and volunteer with us.

Anastasia, (founder of streetlight) and all the team.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Im just not meant to be here

I have been doing photos and stories with the rough sleepers I know for a while now, and when I asked this man what he would like to share, he just looked at me and said ' I'm just not meant to be here'

This man was one of the very first people I met when I started out, he explained from the start how he had gone into hospital for a routine operation and sadly fallen sick with MRSA which ate away 30 percent of his brain. Hes now unable to work and has sadly turned to alcohol, resulting in him loosing his home and ending up on the streets

A typical soupie.

A day in the life of a soup kitchen.

I thought it were about time I explained to you all exactly what goes on at a soup kitchen and before. Its not just as simple as running the soup kitchen, there's loads to do.

A few days before a Saturday night soup kitchen we will attempt to organize our rota. Its not always easy though, we always try to secure volunteers before the day of soup kitchen so we can organize who's doing what and make sure our volunteers realize whats going to go on and they receive our guidelines.

So with a rota organised and peoples roles sorted, our job starts on Saturday morning. On Saturday morning we will go to the supermarket, (Anastasia and Rachel) and buy everything we need for that evening. We are usually doing hot food, so were in the supermarket filling our trolley to the brim full of fresh food. We do all our meals from scratch, nothing comes out of a packet. Last week we cooked a fresh spicy vegetable curry. So our trolley was filled with Aubergine, Potatoes, Onions, Chili's, peppers, mushrooms, beans, celery, rice, lentils and curry paste.

We buy 6 bottles of water for 99p in Lidles so we grab around ten packets of water. There pretty heavy !

If were making sandwiches at home we also buy as many loaves of bread as we can. We buy the cheap bread, its 50 p a loaf. For our sand which fillers we tend to do wafer thin ham and mustard, wafer thin chicken, Cheese and garlic spread and plane cheese spread. We have a vegetarian girl who comes to our soup kitchen so we always make her separate sandwiches, usually cheese and tomato. She really appreciates the fact we go to the extra effort. We also have a man who comes to our soup kitchen who is gluten free so we buy him special bread and make him his own sandwiches so he doesn't get sick. As he cant have the biscuits or cakes we hand out we also make sure we have gluten free cake each week. Both of these people are really happy that we do our best to meet their needs.

We also buy chocolate bars, crisps, cereal bars and cakes if no other volunteer is covering this.

If we don't have any pots left or cutlery / cups we have to go to the shop and buy them... See how busy we are !?

Right then, that's all that done, now to go home and start the food.

We'll get home and bring all the bags into the house and unload all the shopping. All the shopping tends to take up all the space in the kitchen so it gets a bit hectic. We'll start prepping our veg, chopping two sacks of onions, two sacks of potato and crying the whole time. Cos of the onions, not cos im sad doing the soupie ! We start to cook everything in our massive catering pan, the food starts to smell lush, I do like a good curry ! While the curry simmers away we will start on sandwiches if were also making them that week.

For sandwiches we set up a little conveyor belt type system. Get the whole loaf out and spread the butter on every piece. Then put some ham on it, then a top, then pile them all up, make sure they don't topple over like that old game you used to play as kids. JengaaAAAAAAAA.... Once there all stacked up and cut we then wrap them all individually in foil. Its a timely job for sure.



BREATH ANASTASIA , BREATH.


Once all the sandwiches are made we can chill out for a while... Kinda... chill out for  a while as well as sorting clothes for the evening... The homeless always need clothes you see.

Righto, clothes sorted. Now time to start potting up the hot food. We pot up in foil containers. Damn they get reaaaalllly hot. Mum (Rachel) dishes the food into the pots and I put all the lids on then put them into our polystyrene container. This takes ages. And the pots burn your fingers. EVERY TIME.

After potting up I'll start on the dreaded task of making the hot tea and coffee flasks. I hate this. I have to boil the kettle around 12 times to fill them up and as I have the concentration span of a nat I always do them wrong, sometimes we end up with three teas of two black coffees, no white coffees, and one tea !

Teas and coffees finally done. Correctly. Now its time to load up the car. Now we dont have a very long garden path, but we still have to take a few trips up and down loading all the hot meals into the car, the flasks, the crisp, the chocolate, the cakes, the shoes, the toiletries and of course those dreaded hot drink flasks. Oh I hate doing them.

Were off. Were on the road. We live in Mudeford and our soup kitchen is in Bournemouth. When we arrive at our location we usually have four or five guys come and help us unload the car, there all really helpful, its great. We set up with our table and all the volunteers get into their roles. Each week a volunteer is given a 'job' at the soup kitchen.

Jobs are : Serving hot meals, handing out cutlery along the line, handing out sandwiches, handing out crisps and cake, hot drinks, water, clothes and toiletries.

Everything is done in a line.


First stop food. The rough sleepers all que, and on the shout of go were started. The rough sleepers are given there hot meal first, then they walk along the tables and take everything else they need, finishing off with a hot drink and a bottle of water.

The rough sleepers then sit down and enjoy their hot meals, then some of them will have a look for some clothes or toiletries.

Of course there's chats !

We all love a good chat. Sometimes Im so busy cos everyone wants to talk, im being pulled in every direction possible but by the end of the night everyone has had an equal amount of time chatting and everyone leaves happy.

Once everyone has been served a hot meal, and theres no more people coming, if we have more hot meals we shout ' Second meals' and anyone that wants a second hot meal can grab one... which is usually a lot of people !

The rest of the soup kitchen is generally us just chatting to the rough sleepers, making sure everyone's okay, chatting about how they can get help with addictions and getting off the streets. Sometimes there's tears, there's always laughs and there's definitely always HUGS !

I hope this has given you some insight into what its like running a soup kitchen.

Big thanks to all my wonderful volunteers who also cook at home, who make bundles of sandwiches, who bake us cakes and who support us week after week.