Ladled with Love are a group of like minded friends who share the same passion for helping the needy, vulnerable, and homeless community in Hull.
We were formed in September 2019 operating a Soup Kitchen in Queens Gardens every Monday at 6:30pm in all weathers.
We generally feed around 50 to 60 people but have had in excess of 100 hungry people some nights. We never know how many people will turn up we always cater for around 100 as we would hate to have to turn anyone away hungry.
We know any excess is never wasted as we can give take out meals or drop any spare meals at one of Hulls hostels on our way home.
Our quirky name basically says what we are all about was thought up by one of our volunteers as in normal circumstances we bring large pots of food and “Ladle” the food into trays at our table, we make sure everyone gets a hot meal then everyone can return to the table for seconds and even third helpings some nights. We then endeavour to also serve a hot pudding with custard.
During this Pandemic we closed the kitchen from March until July but after speaking with Humberside police and Hull City Council we reopened after modifying the way we operate with measures such as social distancing, masks, sanitation and serving our meals ready portioned in takeaway tubs introduced to minimise time spent at the table so as to protect volunteers and service users alike.
We have specialists in Benefits and Drug/alcohol abuse amongst our volunteers and work closely with other agencies such as Emmaus so we can signpost people, always within their best interests and adhere to all data protection protocols.
We receive many requests for food parcels as everyone is struggling at the moment due to Furlough etc and we help as many as we can, we were inundated with requests when the voucher scheme was stopped for those children that usually receive free school meals and again we provided food parcels for their children’s lunches. We support a breakfast club at a local primary school providing cereals, and another school that operates a Backpack Friday were 15 of the most vulnerable children are given bbackpacks of food to ensure that they eat over the weekend.
We also give a donation every week to St.Johns Foodbank with items they are short of and in return they provide us with items we struggle to obtain. We do all of this with zero funding, we rely on donations entirely otherwise ourselves as volunteers buy anything needed, luckily we have a great relationship with local people and businesses so this doesn’t happen too often.
Our groups motto is “Intention not Attention”.