Buy one, get one free?
A parable of tenderness
In August 2007 the Missionaries of the Company of Mary began a food delivery service to those who are either destitute or unable to access help in the Southampton area. This ministry is called the Poitiers Project because it resonates with the work of the community’s founder, Louis de Montfort, in Poitiers, France when he worked amongst those living within the city’s poor house.
‘Louis … obtained an old donkey, saddled it with two large baskets, and went the rounds of the tradesmen and wealthy people of the town. He was at first the cause of many raised eyebrows, but it was not long before he became an accepted sight, and would return with laden baskets and full pockets … His begging baskets may have been humiliating, but they were undoubtedly the only practical means of solving the problem’
The numbers of men, women and children served increases each week. At present, our co-workers and volunteers are providing over 5000 meals a month, including giving food to 100 children. We operate within the poorest quarters of Southampton and take food to many different people including people in financial crisis, those struggling to cope due to addiction, trauma or rebuilding their lives after exiting prostitution.
How you can help
Finding enough food each week to feed all these people is an immense task. Many of the churches in the Southampton area support local homeless charities but it is precisely because these charities receive Government funding that the Poitiers Project was founded; ‘to meet the unmet need’.
We have collecting boxes in the church to take your donations. Why not take along some of these items:-
- Milk (UHT or powered)
- Cereal
- Tinned Soup
- Fruit Juice (Long life)
- Pasta Sauces
- Baked Beans
- Rice or Sponge pudding (tinned)
- Tomatoes (tinned)
- Pasta or Rice
- Tinned Vegetables
- Tinned Fruit
- Tea or Coffee
- Instant Mash potato
- Tinned Meat or fish
- Sugar
- Biscuits