Reasons to be Cheerful - Parents Evening, Tina and All Paid Up!

I really wish they'd paint all the beach huts at Bexhill. They'd look so cute multicoloured. As it is, they look pretty fine all white! ☕️🍛 Lovely day to have coffee with friends and then a spot of lunch before parents evening tonight. Not that they'll tell me anything I don't know. JJ rushes and talks too much! It's true but he is still getting all 8 & 9's bar PE and Art do I can't moan too much! 🏆🏆🏆

A post shared by Michelle Pannell (@michelletwinmum) on Jun 15, 2017 at 7:01am PDT

Evening all, It's getting late and I totally meant to write this post last night but you know what it is like, sometimes time just runs away.

I was tempted not to bother with this post but Becky had emailed me earlier to say she has a bit of an emergency and won't be hosting R2BC this week and seeing as I am sat here n a fug, feeling very grumpy, of course what I need to do is focus on the positives.

So here are my positives -

1.  We just had an amazing family holiday in Spain and I had a wonderful time and not only that but as soon as school is out in about 5 weeks I'll be off to Bournemouth with my parents and the kids for another holiday. I'm a lucky girl.

2.  I went to JJ's parents evening tonight following his report we received last week and there were no surprises there. He is a super bright boy, with a great future ahead. He just needs to stop rushing, put a bit more effort into homework and work on his empathy/ kindness. I need to set him some challenges over the summer months to help with this, do shout if you have any ideas!

3.  I'm off to the food bank tomorrow to volunteer and I always enjoy helping there. I am thankful that I am not in the position to need the help and grateful that I can do a small bit to make someones day just a bit brighter.

Nourish Community Foodbank, Where Every Tin is a Hug

L-R Lesley Darcy, Assistant Operations Manager. Dawn Stanford, Operations Manager
and Marianne MacDonald, Trustee

I've just spent the last few hours in a Big Yellow Self Storage unit and do you know what? I had the best time, I haven't laughed like I did in ages. This is no average storage unit, let me tell you. This is the home of the Nourish Community Foodbank where I've spent the morning in the company of three super passionate women who are each making a difference in their community.

'Every tin is a hug' is the wisdom imparted in me today from Marianne MacDonald, Trustee of the Nourish Community Foodbank. She told me this is how she explains her voluntary work to her daughter and she went on to say 'Nourish is so much more than just food, it is a helping hand, a squeeze, a hug and a feeling there are complete strangers who care'. Marianne talked with passion about how making donations to a food bank such as Nourish is conscious giving, people have made a choice to add extra shopping to their basket or to open their cupboard and see what they can donate, it is so much more involved than just putting loose change in a tin.

She is of course right and I see this first-hand as I also volunteer in my local foodbank in Hastings. Nourish is like no other food bank I've ever seen though, they operate from the Big Yellow Self Storage building and are gifted a 200 sq ft unit by them and have been for the last few years. Their team of volunteers meet there each week to weigh, sort and pack the food and the food parcels are then delivered straight to the door of the person in need, removing any obstacles such as transport or ill health from stopping them getting their much needed food, toiletries and personal items.

What does a 13 Year Old do with his Inset Day from School?

On Friday it was an inset day at JJ's secondary school. I'm not sure what most of his friends do when it's an inset day but I suspect there are very few of them that do what JJ does and say "Yes Mum! Can I come to food bank with you?".

This is probably the fourth or fifth time that JJ has chosen to spend his day off school with me serving at the Hastings food bank and what does he get out of it you might wonder? Well firstly, he gets to spend the day with his mum of course. Then I sometimes take him to the local Premier Inn for a buffet breakfast before we start work and he also gets the satisfaction of a good days work and having helped some people.

I wouldn't say that at 13 years JJ is particularly altruistic so I don't think his main reason for doing it is because he loves to help others but to be frank it doesn't really matter to me. The fact that he comes along willingly, spends around four hours there and mucks in and helps the whole time are enough. He'll be learning so much from these experiences and they are not skills he'd pick up in the classroom so I'm happy.

Reasons to be Cheerful - Weight Loss, Curry and Living Free #R2BC

Morning friends, if you are over here looking to join in with the Reasons to be Cheerful linky then you need t head over and see the lovely Becky at Lakes Single Mum as she is this months host. I'll be back in March hosting.

Here are my reasons to be Cheerful this week -

1. #1GoodThing and Instagram. I really enjoy Instagram, it is such a positive and visual place, so I love to have half hour there most days. Back in December I started the #1GoodThing hashtag for Advent and the idea was to stay grounded during the crazy run-up to Christmas. I enjoyed it so much and so did @teamlloyd that we decided to keep it going for all of 2017. 

I'm loving seeing more people join in and use the hasthag and it is creating a nice little community of like-minded people. It's a bit like #R2Bc for Instagram I suppose!

This weeks picks on #1goodthing. It's only a tiny community with just a few people joining in every now and then but that's ok. It does brighten my day to see that people are seeking the good in every day.

A photo posted by Michelle Pannell (@michelletwinmum) on Jan 29, 2017 at 11:48pm PST

Hunger - it shouldn't be happening!

Next Friday I'm going along to one of the local Food Bank projects to see how it operates and investigate if I can help out on a regular basis. I know that hunger and poverty is rife in the world, I saw it firsthand when I travelled to Ethiopia with ONE in 2012. I also saw it far closer to my own home when I lived in Hertfordshire and befriended a lady who through a set of crappy circumstances had ended up without enough money to feed herself and her kids.

Since moving to East Sussex I've realised that Hastings is probably an area with a high level of poverty but I never realised how much of a problem it is. Tonight I've been investigating and according to the Campaign to End Child Poverty the level of children living in poverty (and thus hungry) in Hastings across all areas is 31%. When you look at some individual areas the figure is as high as 47% and I kid you not when I say I have a massive lump in my throat as I read that and type this.

I needed to read it too, it is so easy to live a comfortable life and think that everyone else is OK, but they are not and it is up to all of us to make a difference and do something about it and yes that is big and scary and feels like a massive weight but you only have to look at the progress being made in the battle to end world extreme poverty (defined as a person living on less than $1.25 per day for all their needs). In the last 20 years is has been halved and if we continue at the same pace it could be virtually wiped out by 2030 and that is surely something to whoop for joy about.

Taken in Ethiopia. Image Credit - Karen Walrond/ONE

So I choose not to get bogged down and to fall into the doldrums because the problem feels too big but I pledge to help with the Hastings food bank and to chat to people who are using the service and to help them feel valued and heard. But it is not enough for me to just help out locally I also have to keep playing my part in the bigger plan and I'll do that by working with the charities and NGOs that I believe in, like ONE, Compassion, Plan, Save the Children and Tearfund.

I'm trying to stay more up to date with what is going on at the moment, which campaigns are happening, who needs support and what with and also I'm heading to Washington, USA in October for the AYA Summit with ONE. At this meeting I will get to meet a whole host of inspirational women, and just like I was when I went to Ethiopia I expect to be fully humbled and inspired to do more, fight harder and be better. I feel more privileged than I can ever express to have this opportunity, in fact when the email came through inviting me I asked if they really wanted me, surely there were better advocates to spend the cost of the airfare on but it seems ONE believe in me and the people reading my blog and being influenced by my writing and travels. I sincerely thank you readers (friends) for taking the time to take small steps which help us change the world and change perceptions too.

I've never been to America before and I've not been on a plane since my amazing blogger journeys in 2012 but these are not the things that are really exciting me. What is really blowing my mind is the chance to meet some change makers. African women who with the necessary education and tools are making a massive difference within their families and communities. These are the real champions who are slicing the figures for those living in extreme poverty and I pray they impact me and inspire me to keep taking small steps or maybe even to return to the UK and to take a really bold and scary step. Who knows what lays ahead for me...

Can you add your voice and help ONE to campaign for an end to extreme poverty?

If you are not familiar with who ONE are, then please take a look at earlier posts of mine - here, here and here or Liska from New Mum Online interviewed me about ONE and you can read that post. Or go and check out the website. They will never ask you for money, they are an NGO (non-governmental organisation) not a charity, what they require is your support and voice. Can you sign a petition, tweet a message, talk to friends, share on FB or speak to your MP - all those things make a difference when a massive collective of people do them.

I'll leave you with this very short video, I've shared it before but I love it.  It is a bunch of kids talking about why poverty is not our problem!


Disclosure: ONE have invited me to be their guest at the AYA summit in October and they will be paying my expenses to be there. I fully believe in the work they do and I have not been instructed what I must write, I am free to be honest and always am.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

If you like what you have read and want to stay up-to-date then subscribe by email for free and receive blog posts directly to your in-box - just click the link Subscribe to Mummy From The Heart... by Email or perhaps you like to keep all your blog reading in one place, if that is the case you can follow me on BlogLovin too!

Why BOGOF's are Brilliant!

Note:  Please do read this, it is NOT a paid-for post, I'm just passionate about all people having enough to eat.

I’m assuming you know what a BOGOF is?  Buy one, get one free and you increasingly see them at the supermarkets now and everyone likes something for free don’t they?  But what I find often happens is that you then start to stockpile foods that you don’t really need and the cupboard gets way full of things that don’t get used that often.

Shall I share with you what I do with my free one?

I gave it away. Yep, it cost me nothing, so why not share my fortune because I can?

At the moment I am giving it to a specific family that I am helping but at other times I will give it to our local food bank. My local food bank is run by a church in my town and it has donations of both goods and money from other local churches, local people and supermarkets.  I went to visit a couple of weeks ago and watched as they gave out 2 bags of shopping to about 60 families. Families that are in need because they are living on the poverty line.  Roll back a year and I had no idea that anyone lived on the poverty line in an affluent Hertfordshire town. It is so wrong.

I sincerely wish I knew more about the way our benefits worked in this country as I find it so hard to believe that people are expected to live on such a small amount, it means that even when they have changed their ways and are trying hard to work themselves out of debt, they hardly can. It is just horrifying that a family may split and the benefits go with the partner who has walked out and the person left home with the kids then has to be reassessed, easily taking 2 - 4 months. What will they eat in the meantime?  I used to naively think that everyone had someone they could turn to when things were really tough, I now know that is not the case.

Food banks are a lifeline to some people; the tray of eggs, box of cereal and tinned fruit that they receive are luxuries in their daily meal of plain pasta or tinned soup.  Yes that really was the extent of the diet of a lady I have been helping up until a few months ago when I bought her to my house and started to feed her.

And that is the thing, we are not talking scruffy homeless people here, you may never spot on the street who is struggling and needs help. At the food bank I saw a load of families from my kids' school, all dressed and clean, all with homes and polite children that attend school but for one reason to another, illness, redundancy or such they need food. I now know of mothers who regularly skip their meals so they can feed their children.  Of families who use a microwave to cook everything as they cannot afford to have their well-used cooker mended and of children who have never tasted a piece of exotic fruit as that would just be a frivolous waste of their parents scarce money.

This is the picture in every town in the UK, even the rich ones like mine, where the average house price is £250K. The good news is that increasingly there are more local food banks available and people are able to turn to them but it strikes me that not enough people know about them or know how to access them.  So if you are reading this and you skip meals as you would rather feed your kids or you know that a bag of shopping would make the world of difference to your diet then visit this map and see just how many there are across the country.  Also speak to your GP or Health Visitor as it will be them or specified council workers who will be able to give you a voucher to use at the food bank.

I am passionate to see this network grow.  People coming together and helping other people is so important. In this day and age we hear everyone talking about how so and so needs a helping hand and wouldn't it be great if they got a break? Well, we can all orchestrate that break and it is so simple.  Small donations from lots of people make a big difference.

Perhaps after reading this you feel compelled to put an extra item of shopping in your trolley and maybe some of your local supermarkets have food bank drop-off points for you to conveniently drop the tin or packet into. Or maybe you can give an hour or two a week to help sort the donations or chat to someone in need. 

There is something we all can do.  The question is........ will you?


Image Credit