Gscene Magazine - November 2020 | WWW.GSCENE.COM

Thought for food Jaq Bayles hears from Gary Pargeter how Lunch Positive successfully repositioned itself to serve new needs created by the coronavirus pandemic

“The week of lockdown we paused Lunch Club. That was quite sad because it’s a lifeline for some people, the only day they meet people or go anywhere.”

For community organisations, the pandemic has thrown up some very particular problems. Some may have seemed insurmountable – how do you maintain contact and a sense of togetherness when every edict seems to negate those possibilities? Lunch Positive has proved resilient in the face of unprecedented challenges, having become aware in January that the world was on a trajectory of change and beginning conversations about what that change might be and what it would mean for the social side of the organisation. Then events began to escalate and in March the number of HIV Lunch Club attendees started declining as people began to lose confidence about going out and being around others. Lunch Positive founder Gary Pargeter says: “Before lockdown we could see that something was going to change in terms of how we met as a community.” While it wasn’t a sharp decline, attendance dropped from around 30-50 people every Friday to around 25-30. “It was people we knew who were particularly worried and had high levels of anxiety. Their sense of vulnerability was exacerbated and they felt

“Almost without question volunteers wanted to do something useful... For things to continue they just stepped up and took on new roles. Even some who were self-isolating worked from home”

they might be more at risk, although that’s not necessarily the case if someone is HIV positive,” adds Gary. “The week of lockdown we paused Lunch Club. That was quite sad because it’s a lifeline for some people, the only day they meet people or go anywhere.”

In the knowledge that many people – both existing Lunch Club members and those who had become involved through the distance befriending that had been taking place through social media and phone calls – now had nutritional support needs, Lunch Positive

mobilised around 30 volunteers to gather at its usual meeting place, the Dorset Gardens Methodist Church, on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays to prepare and deliver meals throughout lockdown.

“Almost without question volunteers wanted to do something useful,” says Gary. “For things to continue they just stepped up and took on new roles. Even some who were self-isolating worked from home.”

It was no easy task to co-ordinate the service on such a large scale, requiring “military precision”, but volunteers were “the linchpin to the whole response”. “Over the course of the week a volunteer co-ordinator would let us know who was asking for deliveries and how many meals they needed. Tuesdays a team would prepare the raw ingredients and refrigerate them; Thursdays we cooked and chilled down the meals, and we delivered mainly on Fridays and additional Tuesdays for people who don’t have much fridge space.”

The team was sending out some 500 meals a week – up to five days’ worth of food for 100-112 people, mainly in Brighton & Hove, but some in Worthing and other parts of West Sussex, which was in partnership with THT West Sussex workers.

Gary adds: “While we were directly supporting our service users, in terms of support for us as a charity it was as part of a citywide response with Brighton & Hove Food Partnership, finding opportunities and donations of food, expanded food donations from Fareshare, who we work with throughout the year, and kind donations of food from local businesses.” He describes the effort working alongside other organisations as very “energising”, but it also challenged volunteers’ creativity when it came to menu planning. As Gary explains, there was a pattern to what food was being donated. “For seven or eight weeks we had nothing much more of vegetables than butternut squash or cucumbers and we had to think what we were going to do with that one thing over the next few weeks. That also related to who was involved in volunteering, what time people had and what skills. It really was a big activity. The planning had to be precise around the logistics of having the right people and things in the right place at the right time.” An important acknowledgement for Lunch Positive is the fact that all the volunteers were giving up more time and against a backdrop of the personal impact of Covid as a risk, their own caution and changes in routine, so contributing was enabling for them. Gary continues: “One of the conversations was about how helpful it was for people to have something to be involved in. That’s a good example of the principles of volunteering and how it has benefits for everyone.”