Breadline Voices: Rise in working people having to rely on free food

Sara Benjamin is project coordinator of the Community Champions Project in the Gibbs Green and West Kensington estates in central London, which aims to help residents access services to improve their health and wellbeing and reduce inequalities

"We operate every Monday and it’s basically a food distribution project where people can come and collect surplus food items.

"Obviously now, we’ve seen the cost of living go up quite high so demand on families and individuals is getting really really bad.

"We're noticing there is a lot more food poverty, not just only those who are unemployed, we are actually getting a lot more employed people.

Video courtesy of City Harvest London

"We are getting maybe even twice the amount of people coming through our doors.

"The donations we get are so so beneficial for us and it’s so so needed and it would be a shame if this was to come to an end for the people in the community and people that travel from outside of the community to come and collect food because it helps them to be able to live a normal life."

• The content of this blog was created by City Harvest London as part of its City Speaks Up initiative, which aims to highlight the impact of food poverty and the cost of living crisis.

This is part of Breadline Voices, a series from The Food Foundation highlighting the realities faced by millions of families plunged into food and fuel poverty as food prices reach a 40-year high.